


Ordinary Magic

by gingerandhoney



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: AU - Mildred grows up at Cackle's, F/F, Gen, Magical Culture, Pippa is there (eventually), Worldbuilding, but the focus is mostly on Hecate and the Hubbles, slow-burn found family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2020-09-03 09:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 118,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerandhoney/pseuds/gingerandhoney
Summary: “So, erm, Hecate, is it?”Hecate stiffens, her spoon halfway to her mouth.“We met at my interview last month. Julie Hubble,” the woman says, holding out her hand to shake before retracting it almost as quickly. “Oh! Er—well-met.” She scrambles to touch her forehead and nearly upturns her soup bowl into her lap.Hecate flicks her wrist and freezes the whole ensemble before last week’s porridge disaster can repeat itself.Like mother, like daughter, apparently.**Hecate Hardbroom finds her life turned upside down when Cackle's hires a new Ordinary Culture teacher.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I began planning this story in March of 2018, at which point I had seen S1 and some parts of S2. Because of this, the worldbuilding I do here plays with (and, in many cases, diverges from) the world of the show as it was in the first/early second series.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Ada, surely…”

“Now, Hecate…”

Hecate sighs. “I can’t see how this ends in anything other than disaster.”

“The magical and Ordinary worlds are mingling now more than ever, Hecate,” Ada says, peering up at Hecate through her spectacles. “You know that. Who are we to leave our children unprepared?”

“Even so. Hiring _that_ woman—she wasn’t even supposed to be able to_ see_ our advertisement! How do we know there’s nothing sinister afoot? You know Agatha would stop at nothing to gain control of the school.”

“Agatha is safely locked away. I am confident in the Great Wizard’s abilities. Aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And, as for the advertisement, her daughter was apparently the one to point it out to her.”

From the upper gallery where they stand, they look down at the girl in question: a tiny thing with bright-coloured hair sitting floors below them in a corner of the entrance hall, rubbing crayons across the pages of a notebook while her mother flips through an Ordinary newspaper beside her.

The pair look desperately out of place against the stone and leather of the room, the little girl with her red jumper and tatty shoes, the mother with her mop of curly hair tied up in what looks like a spare piece of butcher’s twine.

It is easy to see they’ve fallen on hard times. In her interview, the mother had been somehow at once cheerful and blustery, stumbling to reassure them that _magic_ was just another thing to which she could easily learn to adapt.

She’d brought with her a list of references. Her last position had ended nearly five months ago.

“Layoffs,” she’d said, a tremulous smile on her face as she’d sipped a heavily-sugared cup of tea at Ada’s desk. “You know how it is…”

Hecate had only just stopped herself from replying in the negative. Even she could tell that would have been in poor taste.

“Well, on your head be it,” Hecate sighs finally, watching the girl pull what looks like a desperately squashed sandwich from her mother’s rucksack.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Ada says, smiling.

**

The Hubble woman receives the news with about as much decorum as Hecate had expected: shrieking and then twirling her daughter around in the air until they both collapse, laughing, onto the floor.

Hecate prepares for a very trying term.

**

For three weeks, Hecate manages to avoid the castle’s new residents almost entirely. She sees them only twice in this time: once as they’re in the process of carrying cartons of belongings from a very beat-up automobile into a set of rooms in the East Wing, and then again when the pair walk through the fields by the greenhouse as Hecate is harvesting blood lilies for a headache potion.

And Hecate thinks (hopes) perhaps she’d been wrong about reading _disaster_ into their presence.

Until one morning she’s passing the school kitchens and hears a resounding _CRASH_ from inside.

She transfers in to find the little Hubble girl standing over the broken remains of a blue china bowl, a breakfast tray dangling from the fingers of her right hand. A porridge-looking substance has been splattered across every surface in a five-foot radius. Morning sunlight falls through the frosted windows, painting the scene with a pleasant glow that clashes absurdly with the mess of the room.

“_What _is going on here?” Hecate demands.

The girl just gapes up at her, hair mussed, dressed in porridge-spotted polka-dot pyjamas.

Hecate had forgotten how _small_ children could be. She can’t recall encountering one younger than eleven in…well, a good many years.

The girl hardly comes up to her waist. It makes Hecate hesitate for a moment, before she decides to carry on as she would with one of her students. There can’t be much difference between—what, six?—and eleven.

“_Well_?” she presses.

“I—I was making breakfast for Mum,” the girl says, finally.

Hecate’s eyebrow twitches. “That does not explain how it ended up _everywhere._”

The girl looks around, grimacing at the mess.

“Well I… I thought…I…”

Hecate crosses her arms, drumming her fingers against the opposite elbow. “Spit it out.”

The girl makes a face. “I dunno. It just…happened.”

Broken china and splattered porridge certainly didn’t _just happen. _In fact, Hecate is not entirely sure the girl is even permitted to be in this part of the castle unsupervised. Feeling irritation building, Hecate debates whether she should make the girl clean the mess. In the end, however, she just waves her hand and vanishes the lot.

“Whoa,” the girl whispers, whipping her head around as the evidence of her carelessness disappears, leaving the kitchen clean and whole once more (minus one china bowl).

For some reason, the display of wide-eyed wonder makes Hecate uncomfortable. She clears her throat. “Yes. Well. Do be more careful in the future.”

She transfers away before the girl can say anything in reply.

**

The long, slow summer months have seemed even longer and slower this year than in years past—and yet Hecate barely finishes setting the Potions store cupboard to rights before the start of term is at hand.

And it is just her luck, she supposes, that she finds herself sat next to the newest member of staff at the First Feast.

The Hubble woman has dressed herself in the most egregious getup Hecate has ever seen—a long, loose green skirt, mismatched socks, _clogs,_ and a purple blouse embellished with such a number of sequins Hecate wonders she hasn’t yet been mistaken for some sort of illegal dragon hybrid. The woman’s every movement reflects candlelight across the staff table to dizzying effect.

Hecate sniffs.

At the crow’s call, Miss Tapioca brings the trolley out from the kitchen, its wheels squeaking horribly as they roll over the flagstones. Once she reaches the staff table, she pauses to survey the assembled students and staff and then—just as the wait grows awkward—snaps her fingers, filling the bowls in front of them fill with soup that looks, frankly, like congealed slug slime.

The girls greet their food with exclamations of horrified delight. The hall is soon filled with the sound of clinking spoons and excited chatter, the noise drifting up to roost in the rafters where it will stay quite comfortably until the winter holidays.

The summer quiet has gone out with a whimper. Hecate can feel a headache coming on.

She hopes the woman next to her has enough sense to let her eat in peace.

“So, erm, Hecate, is it?”

Hecate stiffens, her spoon halfway to her mouth.

“We met at my interview last month. Julie Hubble,” the woman says, holding out her hand to shake before retracting it almost as quickly. “Oh! Er—well-met.” She scrambles to touch her forehead and nearly upturns her soup bowl into her lap.

Hecate flicks her wrist and freezes the whole ensemble before last week’s porridge disaster can repeat itself.

Like mother, like daughter, apparently.

Hecate takes a demure bite of her soup, managing not to grimace at the taste, and enjoys the brief respite while Ms. Hubble thaws.

“Well that certainly wasn’t necessary,” Ms. Hubble says, once she’s mobile again, and reaches out to steady the reanimated soup bowl. She wipes her hand on a green cloth napkin and eyes Hecate a little resentfully.

“I beg to differ.”

Ms. Hubble blinks. “_Really_—“

But she is interrupted by Ada, who stands then and begins her welcome speech.

Afterwards, Ms. Hubble makes no further attempts at conversation.

Hecate makes her excuses as soon as the meal ends, retiring to her rooms for a hot cup of tea, Morgana curled up by her feet.

**

Term begins in its usual frenetic way. Hecate assigns two detentions in the first half of the first day; the third years are going to be hellish, she can just tell.

Ada announces the new Ordinary Culture teacher at assembly, and the hall goes quiet for a moment before breaking into a roar of conversation.

Ada claps her hands for silence.

“I am sure,” she says, smiling down at them all in that brook-no-nonsense way of hers, “that you will all be gracious and welcoming to our newest member of our staff. We are delighted to have Ms. Hubble, and we hope she will be equally delighted to have us.”

Hecate hears whispers in the corridors, after—generally to the effect of _why should we have to learn anything about Ordinary people _and _who is this Hubble woman, anyway? _and _maybe Miss Cackle’s finally gone round the bend._

She flicks sparks at the whisperers of the last and enjoys the resulting yelps.

Throughout the next weeks, Hecate watches Ms. Hubble across the staff room. The woman can nearly always be seen sat at an out-of-the-way table, scribbling away in her notebook and paging through some book or other, only looking up when Miss Drill offers her the odd biscuit from the tea spread. To her credit, she seems to take the atmosphere of derision in stride, forging on with her classes even as letters pour in from angry parents decrying the state of today’s witching education.

(When Hecate expresses alarm at the volume of letters flapping around the mailroom, Ada simply declares it ‘to be expected.’)

The little Hubble girl begins school as well, reporting to Ada’s office each morning to be transferred down to the village primary. She appears in the staff room some afternoons, seeming content enough to sit with a drawing pad while her mother works.

The Cackle’s girls have taken to the child’s presence rather better than they have her mother’s—a state of affairs which, while perhaps of a pleasanter nature than the situation with Ms. Hubble, is no less disruptive to the school environment. The girls squabble relentlessly over the child’s attention at meals and weekends, employing such things as magicked paper bats and contraband colour-change potions and promises of visits with familiars as inducements. One Saturday, Hecate interrupts a group of year threes attempting to lead the Hubble girl on a tour of the carnivorous plants in the school greenhouse. After sussing out their intentions and sending the girl back to her rooms, she sets the perpetrators a thousand lines: _I will not contribute to the delinquency of Ordinary children._

The Cackle’s staff seem quite taken with the girl as well—particularly Miss Drill, who begins taking her outside on fair days for broomstick rides.

Hecate disapproves of this massively, but only presses her lips together in scornful silence as she watches the pair zooming past the high windows of the staff room on Miss Drill’s broom.

“She’ll break her neck, I swear,” Hecate hears Ms. Hubble mumble from her table in the corner.

Still, the woman directs a small smile at the window where her daughter had been just seconds before.

**

One September afternoon, as Hecate is marking the fifth years’ essays on moonstone, the silence in the staff room is broken by a small shuffling noise.

At first Hecate thinks the rats might have returned, though she’d reinforced the Rat-Away spells around the castle just last year.

But then she sees a shock of auburn hair under a table.

She raises an eyebrow.

The girl is quiet enough, though, so after a moment Hecate returns to her marking.

Then there’s a loud squeaking sound and Hecate looks up, startled, to see the girl has shoved one of the armchairs across the floor.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demands, pinning the girl with a severe look as she waits for her heartrate to return to normal.

The girl glances over at her. “Sorry. That was louder than I thought,” she says, before dropping to the floor once more and shuffling around on her hands and knees.

“If you are waiting for your mother,” Hecate says impatiently, “she is currently in class.”

“I know,” the girl says, shrugging.

Hecate closes her eyes. “It would be best for all involved if you waited for her somewhere that is _not here._”

The girl turns toward Hecate, flopping onto her backside, the knees of her green leggings smudged grey with dust. “I can’t. I’ve lost my blue crayon.”

“I fail to see how that is relevant.”

“I’m _looking_ for it,” the girl says, a strange expression on her face, like she thinks Hecate is missing something obvious.

Hecate, for her part, is beginning to wonder why people bothered communicating at all with small children, who seem—if this child is representative of the general population—incapable of rational thought.

“What I mean to say,” she says, slowly, dangerously, “is that its loss does not prevent you from leaving when you have been _expressly asked to do so_.”

The girl frowns. “No I haven’t.”

“I _beg your pardon_—”

The girl gets up from the floor. “But I _haven’t_ been asked to leave. You just said ‘it would be best,’ but it _wouldn’t _be best because I’ve lost my blue crayon and I’m doing a project on the oceans for school and I can’t finish it without the blue.”

Hecate blinks.

“I remember I had it last in here, when I was playing noughts and crosses with Miss Drill.” The girl walks over to the table where Hecate is working. “Have you seen it?”

Hecate recovers her voice. “If I had,” she says, feeling a bit at odds, “I would have said so.”

It is very strange, she thinks, to speak to a child who seems not the least bit frightened of her. She wonders how that can be the case. Surely the students would have told the girl tales (some of them true) of the formidable _Miss Hardbroom. _Her reputation precedes her, she’s aware, to such a degree that even newly-arrived first years know to treat her with a particular sort of wariness.

“Oh.” The girl sighs, before plopping herself into the empty chair beside Hecate without invitation. “What are you doing?”

Taken aback for perhaps the fifth time in as many minutes, Hecate finds herself answering, “Marking.”

“Mum was doing that all last night,” the girl says solemnly. “There were stacks and stacks of paper everywhere.”

“Hmmm,” Hecate says.

And with that, the girl launches into a stream of inane chatter—about how her mother had broken a teacup that morning tripping over a stack of student work, how a boy at school had put a spider on the teacher’s desk, how her friend Jemima had brought ham sandwiches for lunch and traded them for crisps, how at breakfast one of Cackle’s’ upper school girls had shown her the exact right way to sugar Miss Tapioca’s horrible lumpy porridge—that Hecate is pleased to find she can tune out as she returns once again to Esther Wellborn’s essay (a tragedy of English prose).

Twenty minutes later, a rather startled Ms. Hubble finds them just after the crow calls to signal the end of classes for the day.

“Oh!” she says, staring blankly at them for a moment before she recovers herself. “Millie, love, don’t bother Miss Hardbroom.”

She walks over and takes her daughter by the hand, helping her out of the chair and tugging her away, glancing warily at Hecate.

_Had I wanted to hurt the child, I would have done so, _Hecate thinks irritably.

“Bye, Miss Hardbroom! Good luck with marking!” the girl shouts as her mother hustles her out the door.

Hecate stares after them for a long moment before clicking her tongue impatiently at herself and returning once more to her work.

**

It is after an especially hellish double period of potions with the third years (in which their assigned waterproofing potion ended up more on the walls than in their cauldrons due to one particular instigator’s intentional swapping of hellebore for feverfew) that Hecate transfers herself to the staff toilets on the second floor, eager to scrub off what still remained of the sticky gloop after four cleansing spells.

She stops short in the entryway when she hears a familiar voice.

“Pull yourself together, Julie. Just _pull yourself together._”

It’s Ms. Hubble, standing in front of the long mirror hung above the trough sink.

The woman looks decidedly worse for wear: hair wet and windblown, long raincoat dripping small puddles onto the floor, hands gripping the edge of the basin as if to hold herself upright. There are large, dark circles under her eyes; Hecate had first noticed them last week, when Miss Drill had had to continually prod Ms. Hubble in the arm to keep her awake during the Wednesday afternoon staff meeting.

Hecate wonders at the woman’s appearance. It looks as if she’d been caught in a thunderstorm.

It _was_ raining outside, but Ms. Hubble would have been in classes all morning…

It then dawns on Hecate that, though they are currently in the southeast wing of the castle, Ms. Hubble’s classroom is in the northwest wing, and the shortest walking path from there to here would have included at least one outdoor stretch—for, of course, Ms. Hubble did not have the ability to transfer.

Hecate feels an odd twinge of…something, not dissimilar to the discomfort she feels upon re-reading a familiar passage of a book and only then understanding something which should have been obvious to her long before.

The twinge increases in intensity when she catches sight of the waterlogged papers spread out on the flagstones near the radiator, one of which, Hecate can see, is titled _Lesson Plan: Week Four._

Pressing her lips together, Hecate leaves silently. Her thoughts are distracted for the rest of the day.

**

By half-term, the hostility toward Cackle’s’ new subject and its teacher seems to die down— particularly after Ms. Hubble directs a unit on Ordinary kitchen appliances that involves testing traybake recipes. The northwest corridor smells of chocolate for days.

On parents’ evening, Ms. Hubble’s classroom is easily the most…raucous. The students have decorated it with a tasteless display of strung lighting, ostensibly as part of a demonstration on Ordinary electric power generation. The room flashes with alternate greens and golds in a manner liable have the parents mistake the classroom for a discotheque. Perhaps this explains the peals of laughter Hecate can hear ringing through the corridors from the direction Ordinary Culture classroom each time she steps outside to call the next student in for their Potions conference. She cannot imagine what is so amusing about academic counselling.

Scores of parents (many of whom had written letters of protest earlier in the term) queue up to talk to Ada before the start of assembly, telling her how impressed they’d been by Ms. Hubble’s teaching, how their girls just _loved_ their new teacher.

Ada beams and beams and, when the parents’ backs are turned, shoots Hecate a wink.

“What’s got you so down in the mouth?” Ms. Hubble asks her afterwards, as they pass each other on the way to their respective rooms for the night.

Apparently success goes to Ms. Hubble’s head in a way that makes her overly familiar.

Hecate just gives her a searing look that she hopes communicates how very _done _she is speaking to people that evening. (Of all the types of people there are to converse with, parents of secondary school students are among the absolute worst.)

“Here,” Ms. Hubble says, holding out a plate of what must be her students’ brownies, “one of these will set you right. I set them out for the parents to try, but there are still quite a few left over.”

“_Pass_.”

“Oh, go on.” Ms. Hubble picks one up and holds it out to Hecate in a way that makes it impossible to refuse taking it.

Hecate eyes the thing as Ms. Hubble places it in her hand, looking almost too gleeful at Hecate’s distain.

“Well, goodnight!” she says, cheerily, and leaves Hecate standing in the corridor with a brownie in her open palm.

Hecate leaves it on the corner of her desk for three days before vanishing it. Out of spite.

**

In November, Hecate spends her free mornings harvesting flame ferns at the edge of the wood surrounding the school. She enjoys the solitary nature of the activity, despite the cold that bites at her cheeks and the tips of her fingers.

The ferns, after a week’s drying, are crushed into powder and sprinkled on the logs in the fireplaces throughout the castle, allowing the fires to safely burn throughout the night to keep the winter chill at bay.

The days grow shorter and shorter, and the student population ever more restless as end-of-term exams loom. The third years orchestrate a raid on the Confiscation Cupboard that has the staff chasing down man-eating-marshmallows for most of an afternoon.

Exam week is filled with its usual tears and sleep-deprived squabbles. Students fall asleep in the library and on the chairs in common spaces, and those that are not caught by teachers on night patrol wake in the morning with their faces pressed against the pages of books, sprint through the halls in rumpled uniforms, and usually just manage to make it to their classrooms as the exam papers are given out.

On the Saturday before term ends, the school witch ball team scrape a win against Wildwood Witching Academy, Cackle’s’ long-term rival, giving the team an unexpected 1206 more points toward qualifying for next year’s Triennial Inter-School Witch Ball Tournament.

The whole school is thrown into chaos. It takes Hecate most of the night to stomp out the illicit celebrations that crop up in the dormitory wings, and she is inches away from vanishing the maglets of the entire student population when she comes up with the better idea of simply locking them all in their rooms until sunrise.

By the time the last student has flown from school grounds the following Monday, Hecate is ready to sleep for a year.

Unfortunately, there’s still the staff Yule party to face.

**

The staffroom has been strung up with greenery: holly and pine and boxwood bound in garlands all along the walls, wrapped with red ribbon and twine. Hundreds of glowing silver stars hang suspended in the vaulted ceiling. A fire crackles in the grate, logs popping with green and gold sparks.

Under the high frosty windows, Miss Bat plays something old and melancholic on the organ, which has been transferred up from the chanting classroom. Mr. Rowan Webb, the groundskeeper, leans over her shoulder with a soppy look on his face.

Ada stands in the far corner with Miss Mayweather, the Spell Science teacher, and Miss Thistlereed, the school nurse, sipping from a glass of punch and gazing fondly around the room.

At a table by the fire, Miss Gossamer, the botany teacher, is engrossed in a game of Parcheesi with Ms. Hubble.

The latter is wearing the most atrocious jumper Hecate has ever seen—striped red and green with a picture of a bearded man embroidered across the chest. Her hair is tied up off her neck, held together with what looks like tinsel, and her earrings are little bells that tinkle every time she moves her head.

Miss Gossamer smiles and Ms. Hubble smiles and Ada calls something out from the corner of the room that makes them smile even more. And Hecate thinks how well Ms. Hubble has grown to fit there, happy and easy and friendly like the rest of them. It makes her feel oddly sour.

Ms. Hubble looks up just then, catching Hecate’s eyes on her. She raises her eyebrows in challenge.

Hecate scowls and turns away.

She makes her way to the side, where Miss Tapioca has arranged platters of gingerbread and tea cakes and mince pies. She scoops herself a glass of punch and retreats to the corner behind the organ, where the din of the music—now a rather turgid rendition of “Past Three O’Clock”—would hopefully discourage conversation.

From this vantage she catches sight of the little Hubble girl, sat on Miss Drill’s lap in an armchair by the door. The girl is as gaudily dressed as her mother: the top half of her too-bright hair tied up in an awful green bow, the rest down around her shoulders. A cartoonish penguin tap-dances across the front of her jumper.

Miss Drill seems to be reading to her from a book titled _Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus._ The girl chomps down on a gingerbread man’s head, but is otherwise as still as Hecate has ever seen her, apparently taken in by the story.

The partygoers, with the aid of alcohol, grow rowdy and then quiet as the night draws on. Miss Bat falls asleep at the organ and is transferred to her rooms by Mr. Rowan Webb, who follows shortly after. Miss Thistlereed and Miss Tapioca venture downstairs to tidy up the kitchen. Misses Mayweather and Gossamer excuse themselves to prepare for their journeys home the next morning. Ada and Miss Hubble engage in what looks to be an intense conversation by the fire.

Hecate, tucked away on the end of a sofa in a shadowy part of the room, finds herself reluctant to leave. Now that it’s quiet—now that the threat of small-talk and false laughter has truly passed, and the fire burns low, and she holds a goblet of warm mulled wine in her hand, her mind blissfully slow—she finds the idea of returning to her empty rooms rather off-putting.

She’ll stay here, she thinks. Just until the fire dies.

“Hi.”

Hecate starts, nearly dropping the wine all over the Persian rug.

The little Hubble girl is standing in front of her, hair mussed, a book in hand. Her cheeks are rosy from the fire.

“Miss Drill fell asleep,” she says, glancing over her shoulder where, indeed, Miss Drill seems to have nodded off into the padded wing of the armchair.

Before Hecate has a chance to say anything, the little girl is climbing up onto the sofa next to her.

Hecate gives her a stony look. It does not seem to have its usual deterring effect.

“She didn’t finish,” the girl says, opening the book—_‘Twas the Night Before Christmas—_to somewhere around the middle and holding it out in Hecate’s direction. “Can you?”

Hecate’s eyes widen. _Surely not. _“Have they not taught you to _read_?”

The girl frowns up at her. “_Yes. _Of course they have. I’m _seven._” She shifts on the cushion, drawing her legs up under her. There’s a hole in her tights. “It’s a bit hard for me, though, because the letters all mix themselves up in my head. It’s called _dyslexia._” She shakes her head. “But that’s not why I asked. Not really. It’s just _nice _when someone else reads to you. I asked my friend Jemima about it, and she thinks so too, so it’s not just that it’s _easier_ for me when someone else reads. It’s _different_. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t see how,” Hecate says stiffly, taking a sip of wine to prevent herself shouting at the child in front of her mother.

The girl’s eyebrows furrow. “You don’t? Hasn’t anyone ever read to you?”

The question pricks at Hecate unexpectedly, like someone had barged through a door without knocking. She opens her mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.

A strange look passes over the girl’s face. She squares her shoulders. “Here, I’ll show you. I know this one off by heart, so I won’t even have to read it. But I’ll let you see the pictures as I go.”

And, flipping back to the first page, she begins reciting:

_‘Twas the night before Christmas_

_And all through the house_

_Not a creature was stirring_

_Not even a mouse…_

Her voice is small but steady, and she bobs her head to the rhythm of the words.

“It’s not my favourite story ever,” she says, closing the book when she reaches the end, “but I like the rhyme scheme.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Hecate wants to ask how a seven-year-old knows what _rhyme scheme_ is, but she’s preoccupied trying to process the unfolding oddity of the evening.

“And the artwork is really nice,” the girl continues, turning the book over to its front cover. “I can’t tell if it’s watercolour. I think it is.”

“Mildred, what’ve I said about bothering Miss Hardbroom?”

Ms. Hubble is looking over at them from across the room, where she’s still stood with Ada near the fireplace.

“I’m not bothering her!” the girl protests.

Ms. Hubble looks sceptical, but turns back to her conversation after a moment.

“I’m going to get a ginger biscuit,” the girl says. “Do you want one? They’re actually good.”

Hecate shakes her head, and then finds herself with the book in her lap as the girl climbs off the couch and runs off across the room, the ribbon in her hair coming undone as she goes.

It occurs to Hecate, later, that she could have very simply said _Yes, your dratted child is indeed bothering me,_ _please remove her from my presence at once. _

She can’t think of a single reason why she had not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on Cackle's school life: 
> 
> In this universe, Cackle's has six year groups--five compulsory years and an optional sixth year for those who need more time to prepare for university or who wish to do more focused subject-matter study before being placed out in apprenticeships.
> 
> Also, the school year here is divided into two terms: a summer term which lasts from early August to early December, and a winter term which runs from early February to early June. Selection Day falls during the summer holidays, on or close to the summer solstice--so around June 20. Julie was hired sometime shortly afterward.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter Two

Spring comes slowly.

There’s frost in the eaves well into March. The girls shiver as they make their way to breakfast in the mornings, some wrapped in their winter cloaks, some—against uniform regulations—in blankets from their beds. During a particularly nasty storm, Hecate has the fifth and sixth years brew a warming salve in Potions and pretends not to notice when a few of them smuggle jars of it into their schoolbags.

Finally, after what seems like years of winter, the snows stop and the winds die down. The days grow longer. Wildflowers begin to bloom in the fields around the school, filling the castle with sweet smells. Miss Drill starts up witch ball practice again and Hecate glowers at the mud-covered bunch of hooligans that traipse into the dining hall halfway through dinner.

The students take to the grounds in droves, sprawling across the grass on blankets, weaving spells into the air as they revise. Hecate is called upon to mediate when a duel breaks out among the fourth years, apparently instigated by a poorly-managed weather spell drifting off across the courtyard. It ends with three students in the infirmary with hailstone injuries and Hecate, rain-drenched and furious, assigning detentions to the entirety of year four.

The teachers draw up a rota of outdoor supervisory duties after that.

Walking back up from the broom shed one afternoon, Hecate observes Ms. Hubble—though at first it is unclear that it _is_ Ms. Hubble—among a group of second years gathered in the shade of the castle wall.

“Ms. Hubble,” Hecate begins, irritably, “You are meant to be instilling order—“

“Miss Hardbroom!” Ms. Hubble shouts, her voice oddly distorted by the parrot’s beak growing out of her face. “Hello there! Nice day, isn’t it?”

Around her, the second years barely manage to stifle their giggling.

Hecate pins Ms. Hubble with an emphatic look. “As I _said,_ you are meant to be instilling order, not participating in the chaos.”

One of the girls, an Aurora Wentwhistle, speaks up. “We were just practicing with our disguise potions, Miss Hardbroom.”

“Aurora Wentwhistle,” Hecate says, drawing out the name in a soft, dangerous voice. “At present, the only place Ms. Hubble would be capable of appearing unnoticed is in the nightmare of a feverish child. Which _misses the point_ _entirely._”

Aurora cringes.

“Oh, go on, Miss Hardbroom,” Ms. Hubble says, her face swelling bulbously as it returns to its customary shape. “They were just having a bit of fun.”

“Magic isn’t _fun,” _Hecate sniffs. “And I would very much appreciate it if you wouldn’t encourage such foolish notions in our students. Particularly those incapable of accurately producing simple Level Two potions.”

At that, she turns on her heel and walks away, leaving a trail of silence behind her.

**

In April, Hecate and Miss Bat supervise the half-term trip to the Witching History Museum in Kent.

Somehow, Ms. Hubble wrangles herself permission to attend.

Hecate grits her teeth the entire flight to the museum.

(In the formation beside her, Ms. Hubble rides tandem with Miss Bat, clinging to the broomstick with white-knuckled hands, mumbling something that sounds like _Christ on a cracker, we’re all going to die._)

Hecate leads some of the girls on a tour of the Medieval Witchery exhibit, directing them to note down important dates in their maglets.

She’s in the middle of explaining how the wizard Chaucer had died before he could complete his study of Ordinary religious pilgrimages when a flash goes off in the dimly-lit hall.

At first she thinks one of the third years must have smuggled in some bottled lightning (she’d been sure she’d confiscated their entire supply earlier in the week), but then she remembers that _particular _group is off with Miss Bat in the Egyptian Witchery wing.

The flash goes off again, and this time Hecate sees it’s coming from a small box in Ms. Hubble’s hands.

She orders the girls to continue with their maglet assignment and stalks over to Ms. Hubble, who is stood near a display of peacock-feather quills that had been used in the illumination of medieval witching texts.

“_What is the meaning of this_?” Hecate whispers fiercely. Her voice rings out overloud in the vaulted space; some of the girls giggle.

Ms. Hubble looks startled. “Is photography not allowed? There wasn’t a sign.”

Hecate narrows her eyes. “Photography?”

“Yes, photography,” Ms. Hubble says, pushing a button on the box. It lights up with a picture of the quills. “Mildred would just love these. I wanted to show her.”

Hecate peers at the box suspiciously. “That device is a camera?” It looked nothing like any camera she’d ever seen.

“Well, a camera phone, yes.”

Hecate clears her throat. “…Hmm.”

Ms. Hubble grins at her then, her eyes sparkling like Hecate had just said something very amusing. “It’s alright to ask if you don’t know what it is. You don’t always have to be smarter than everyone else.”

Hecate gapes at her and then, recovering herself, walks away with an indignant sniff, snapping at the girls to follow her through to the next gallery.

**

The group eat lunch in the museum canteen—split pea soup and crusty bread, all—and Hecate sits at an empty table in the corner where she can keep an eye on all of the students.

She is about to take her first bite of soup when Ms. Hubble slides into the chair opposite her.

Ms. Hubble raises her hand before Hecate can object. “Now, keep your hair on. I’m not trying to disturb the whole studious solitude thing you’ve got going here. Only, I got carried away earlier and didn’t explain properly.”

_Explain what, _Hecate wonders irritably, setting her spoon back in the bowl with what she hopes is an air of obvious impatience.

Undeterred, Ms. Hubble produces the odd box from her coat pocket and lays it on the table between them. “This,” she says, “is a phone. Short for ‘telephone.’ I’d guess it’s Greek, but the only languages they had when I was at school were French and German, so I can’t be sure—“

_I know what a telephone is, _Hecate wants to interrupt sourly, but the Hubble woman doesn’t let her get in a word edgewise.

“—I’d have to look it up. Anyway, it’s a bit like your mirrors, especially now they’ve got cameras in. Actually,” she says, brightening, “it’s sort of like if your mirrors and maglets were combined in one device.”

She touches a picture on the telephone and another page appears—white, with little blue and grey ovals of writing.

_Happy Birthday Mo! Love you!_

_Thanks love you hope you’re well_

“We can write out messages to people, like that. And if we do a video call, that uses the camera, here,” she points to a small black circle on the back of the phone. “It’s like mirroring, the way you can see the person as they’re talking to you. But before they had cameras in—and internet, but that’s another story—phones were just voices. Like mirroring, but sound only. Some phones are still that way.”

Hecate’s soup is getting cold.

She opens her mouth to tell Ms. Hubble that she has absolutely no interest in the subject of Ordinary inventions and would she kindly leave Hecate in peace.

Instead, eyeing the small box on the table—which has now gone dark of its own accord—Hecate finds herself asking, “How?”

She immediately wants to cut out her tongue.

“How?” Ms. Hubble blinks. “Oh, how does it work, d’you mean?”

Hecate, whose mouth seems to be forming words without the permission of her brain, mutters, “_Yes._”

“Well, it depends,” Ms. Hubble says, looking pleasantly surprised at Hecate’s show of interest. “The old phones—the ones that were just sound—it was all wires. Metal wires buried underground, between people’s houses, that carried sound.”

Hecate frowns, trying to understand.

Ms. Hubble looks at her and sighs, closing her eyes in clear frustration.

And for some reason, Hecate is stung by it. “It was _your_ decision to come and disturb—“

Ms. Hubble’s eyes fly open again. “Oh! No, no,” she says. “No, it’s not—” She reaches her hand across the table towards Hecate’s.

Hecate flinches.

Ms. Hubble stills, giving Hecate a look that speaks of some sudden comprehension. She draws her hand back, slowly. “It’s not _you, _not at all,” she says, shaking her head. “I just— I really find it hard to predict what you lot do and don’t know about us. About the Ordinary world. It’s difficult to know where to even _start _explaining_._ I mean—did you ever take physics in school? Do you ever learn about waves or vibrations or…I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

She sighs, looking out across the canteen. The long stained glass windows of the converted chapel have draped curtains of coloured sunlight across the tables, giving the girls a deceptively angelic appearance. One of the third years drops a pickled adder’s egg into a dozing Miss Bat’s soup; a fifth year hastily fishes it out with her spoon. 

“For instance,” Ms. Hubble says, “according to Miss Cackle, the school was wired for electricity back in the fifties, but it doesn’t seem to be used for much other than lighting? And apparently some of the girls also have electric lighting in their home—but not one of them knew anything about the mechanics of it!” She chuckles ruefully. “When I did my unit on kitchen appliances, I had to start all the way back with static electricity! They had no idea what _electrons_ were!”

Hecate feels her cheeks heat against her will. She is deeply unused to feeling ignorant.

“…which, I suppose, you may not either,” Ms. Hubble finishes slowly. “Sorry.”

Hecate tears off a piece of bread and dips it into her soup, willing the colour away from her face. Wretched woman.

“Listen…” Ms. Hubble says, after a moment’s tense silence. She looks suddenly both anxious and determined, though Hecate can’t imagine why. “I’ve been thinking for a while about—about making a sort of exchange. A knowledge exchange, if you will. Swapping Ordinary knowledge for magical.” She hesitates. “And, well…I don’t suppose _you’d_ be interested?”

Hecate’s head snaps up.

“I could tell you about things like phones, if you like,” Ms. Hubble hurries to say. “And then—if you could just point out things the girls wouldn’t know.” She sighs, tugging at the sleeve of her lumpy striped jumper. “I’ve had the worst time putting together lesson plans. That part’s been an absolute nightmare, really.” She eyes Hecate askance. “And you might also explain things like…I don’t know, like why some of the books in the library seem to want a blood sacrifice before they’ll let you open them. And also about why things like that are allowed in a school.” She huffs out a breath. “So. What do you say?”

There are about a thousand things Hecate could say, beginning with _Why should I care? _ She finds what she most wants to say is _Why me?_ but that seems like much too revealing a response.

They sit in silence for a long while, Hecate staring down into her bowl and Ms. Hubble fidgeting with her soup spoon without eating a single bite.

It is perhaps this display of nerves that allows Hecate to say, finally, “We were taught certain elements of physics in cottage school.”

Ms. Hubble’s eyebrows knit. “You were…what?”

“Johannes Kepler was a wizard.”

The laugh from across the table is sudden and bright.

“_Of course_ he was.”

**

Two days later, Hecate walks into her classroom to find a book set atop her lesson plans.

There’s a folded note. Frowning, she picks it up.

_Miss Hardbroom—_

_I found this at the village library and thought you might be interested._

_Julie_

Hecate looks down to see the book is titled _Across the Line: The Invention of the Telephone._ She runs her hand across the cover. It’s been wrapped in an odd, clear film that crinkles under her fingers. _Property of Wellington-on-Rowe Library_ is stamped along the edges of the pages.

She hardly notices when the girls come in.

**

Winter term draws to a rocky close.

The third years set off a crate of illicit fireworks at the Final Feast, sending the entire hall into uproar. Rude words still hang sparkling in the air several days after the castle has emptied for the summer holidays.

“You've got to give points for creativity,” Miss Drill says ruefully, one hand gripping onto her broomstick while the other scrubs at the shimmering tail of an ‘R’ some twenty feet off the ground.

Hecate dips her brush into a floating pot of Miss Lavender’s All-Purpose Scouring Potion and continues working at a particularly stubborn ‘C.’ “I certainly have not,” she says crossly.

On her broom a little distance away, Ada pauses in her attempt to wipe away an ‘S.’ “If only they would apply themselves to their studies with the same enthusiasm,” she says, a little breathlessly. “Just think what they might achieve!”

Hecate scoffs.

They manage to remove the lettering after three hours’ work. By the end of it, Hecate is ill-tempered and achy and ready to lie down until the coming of the next millennium.

However, it was not to be. Just as she settles down with Morgana and a cup of strong tea, a note pops into existence near her elbow. It pokes at Hecate’s sleeve until, resignedly, she sets her cup down on its saucer and opens it.

**

“You wished to see me, Ada?”

Hecate steps into the headmistress’ office, the door swinging shut behind her.

“Ah, Hecate,” Ada says, waving Hecate inside. “Yes. Well.”

Hecate comes to stand in front of Ada’s desk. The stacks of parchment and scrolls look in a greater state of disarray than usual. A large splotch of ink has seeped into the folded copy of _The Daily Mirror_ near Ada’s elbow.

“As you know,” Ada begins, “Cackle’s is up for our quinquennial review next year. All the classes audited, our curriculum examined, school records scrutinized, teachers and students interviewed—“

Hecate refrains from interjecting to say that she is not so incompetent a deputy head as to have forgotten what a quinquennial review entailed.

“—and I have just gotten word that Ursula Hallow is to head our review committee.”

Hecate’s stomach drops.

Miss Ursula Hallow was a formidable witch, a fast-rising star on the Magic Council’s Committee on Education—and, not least, the only child of Ada’s mother’s youngest brother.

Her coveting of the headmistress’ position at Cackle’s Academy was the worst-kept secret in wellborn witching society.

Hecate draws a scowl over her face. “And, I suppose, this _word_ came from your esteemed cousin herself.”

“Yes, yes,” Ada says, gesturing wearily toward a piece of expensive parchment propped up against the cozied teapot. “All very charming. _Dear Cousin Ada, _and so forth.”

“It is true, though?”

“I’ve just mirrored Egbert—my friend in the Secretary’s office.” Ada sighs. “It is true.”

“But surely, she can’t be—that is, she can’t expect…”

Ada raises her eyebrows. “…to use this somehow to take over the school?” She folds her hands, places them on the desk in front of her. “I have come to realize that there is very little my cousin does not expect to do. And, of what she expects, very little she does not manage to do, in the end.” She leans back in her chair and looks at the ceiling, folding her hands across her chest. “Though you’d think she’d come up with something a _little_ more original than Delineation. It is all very tiresome, don’t you think, that nearly every evil witch seems to cut her teeth by attempting to steal a school away from the proper family line?”

Hecate doesn’t know that she would characterize what is currently an active threat to her life’s work as ‘tiresome,’ exactly, so she just makes a vague humming noise. She never knows quite what to do when Ada gets into these philosophical moods.

“I suppose,” Ada continues, “that it is a clever way to take hold of the next generation of witching talent. Nefarious, really, using the precious education of a child to infect her mind with nonsense. When it’s your own mind producing ignorance and hate within corrupt systems of logic implanted at a tender age…it is ever so much more difficult to identify them as such, and to fight against them.”

Ada raises her head again, meeting Hecate’s eyes with a quiet determination.

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen here, won’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this universe, names, titles, and property are handed down through the female line (yes, that gets Complicated). This means that while Ursula Hallow is related to Ada by blood, she has no legal claim to Cackle's or to the title of Headmistress.
> 
> "Delineation" is the name given to the crime of stealing a school (or other property/titles) away from the proper family line. This can be accomplished through several different means, including (illegal) blood magic, forged paperwork, bribery, murder, fake marriage, and/or turning one's siblings into mollusks. (In this universe, what Ada's mother did by altering the twins' birth order would also be considered Delineation, though I'm not sure she would have been punished for it, given the circumstances (??)).
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter Three

On Selection Day, after the new first years have been examined and Selected and fed and sent home, Hecate walks to the southwest tower.

Ada has just taken her leave, flying off after the feast to visit her sister in Confinement. She’d been unusually subdued during the day’s activities. It is now three years since Agatha’s last attempt to usurp Ada’s position, and Hecate wonders if the latest news regarding the quinquennial review committee has brought up painful memories.

Hecate feels the weight of the situation deeply. In the past weeks, she’d nearly driven herself to distraction thinking of Ursula Hallow and the fate of the school—a fate made ever more pressing by the sight of the fresh young faces that morning. She has never done well with situations that lay beyond her control, and this situation is (with the dubious exception of Hecate’s ability to maintain control of her own classroom and its impression on the review committee) decidedly that.

Hecate is so lost in thought by the time she reaches her destination that she doesn’t immediately notice the presence of another in the tower.

She is therefore rather startled when she registers movement out of the corner of her eye.

She calms somewhat when she sees that it is only the little Hubble girl, curled up on the ledge of one of the long windows that encircle the tower room, her thin face and messy ponytail outlined in profile against the deep violet of the evening sky. The girl seems to be mumbling something toward an object in her hands.

Hecate steps forward.

The girl jumps, scrambling to hide the whatever-it-was behind her back. Hecate prepares to throw up a shielding spell lest the girl go careening backward out of the window. (Careening, Hecate has noticed, is the girl’s primary mode of transport).

“Miss—Miss Hardbroom!” the girl squeaks, looking over one shoulder and then another, as if for a means of escape.

“Mildred Hubble,” Hecate intones, once the girl has righted herself. “What are you doing up here, you silly girl?” She peers suspiciously at the half-hidden object behind her back.

“N-nothing?”

Suspicion mounting, Hecate twists her wrist, transferring the object into her hand.

She blinks down at it, frowning. It seems to be a small stuffed bear, of the kind Ordinary children are said to sleep with.

The girl jumps down from the ledge, shoulders set with defiance. “Give him back! He’s mine!” she insists, making a swipe at Hecate’s hand.

Hecate holds the bear up out of her reach, ignoring the girl in favour of inspecting it further. Save for a slightly torn nose, there appears to be nothing significant about it…

“_One and one make two! One and one make two!_”

Hecate nearly drops the thing in surprise.

“It’s only a recording,” the girl explains, an odd tone in her voice. She’s wearing an odd cotton shirt with the words _Orange you glad? _printed above images of smiling citrus fruit. “You must have squeezed his hand.”

“What?” Hecate asks vaguely.

“If you squeeze his hand, he starts singing.” Eyeing Hecate cautiously, the girl snatches the bear from Hecate’s grasp and then presses her thumb to the velvety inside of its right paw.

“_One and one make two! One and one make two!” _the bear sings. “_I love you whatever you do!_”

“See?”

Hecate does not, at all, _see_. She wonders if it is her lot in life to be thrown into vast spirals of confusion by the Hubbles. If it had not been entirely impossible, she thinks sourly, she would have accused the girl of using a Ventriloquism spell.

“His name is Puss,” the girl says, amicable enough now that her toy has been returned. She clambers back up onto her window ledge and sets the thing in her lap, swinging her legs absently against the tower wall.

“The bear…is called ‘Puss’?” Hecate asks, without really knowing why. It is not as if she’d expected anything sensible to be said in this conversation.

Really, she isn’t at all sure why she hadn’t simply left as soon as she’d seen the tower was occupied.

The girl shrugs. “I always wanted a cat.” She shifts her legs up onto the ledge so that she’s turned half away from Hecate. A warm summer breeze drifts softly in from the window. The girl sighs, touching the bear’s paws together as if it were making a wish, and then says, “I heard the cats here can understand what you say to them.”

Hecate presses her lips together, tapping absently against the metal of her timepiece. “That is because,” she says, “_‘the cats here’ _are witches’ familiars.”

“Does that make them magic?”

Hecate opens her mouth, and then closes it again. She’s unsure how to even begin to address the question, which is equally absurd as asking whether roses were plants, or whether rain was water—and yet, to address it seriously would require explanations of advanced magical theory and summaries of centuries-old debates concerning the sentience of familiars that she is quite certain are beyond the grasp of an eight-year-old.

So she says, instead, “You’ve managed to avoid my original question. What are you doing up here? It’s nearly nine o’clock at night.”

The girl shrugs, looking down at her dirty trainers. “It’s lonely in the summers.”

Which is such a non-sequitur that Hecate’s mind does not seem at first to latch onto the words.

“…Be that as it may,” Hecate manages, finally, “you should return to your rooms.”

“But it’s lonelier there! That’s why I’m up here!”

“It is lonelier in your rooms, _with your mother_,” Hecate asks, reeling on the edge of hopeless confusion once more, “than it is _alone_ in an empty castle tower?”

The girl frowns. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just _is_.” She makes a face, her nose crinkling. “Maybe it’s easier to be lonely in familiar places than it is in different ones. Maybe you notice the quiet more. I don’t know.” She looks up suddenly, and pins Hecate with a curious look. “Why are _you_ up here?”

“I—“ Hecate sputters, unused to being asked directly after her own thoughts, and not a little unsettled by the girl’s description of loneliness. “That is none of your concern.”

“I don’t really understand why you get to ask me questions, but I don’t get to ask you any,” the girl says, a bit crossly.

“I am a _teacher._”

The girl tilts her head to the side. “But you’re not _my_ teacher.”

Hecate can think of nothing to say to that except the oft-repeated adage from her own childhood that children should be seen and not heard, which she finds she does not care to repeat now.

A heavy silence falls. The girl turns away, her hands clasped around her grass-stained knees, the bear tucked up against her chest. Hecate stands stiffly nearby, watching a flock of birds burst at once from a distant tree like seeds blown from a dandelion.

“The sunset is best viewed from this tower,” Hecate says quietly, her voice nearly sticking in her throat.

The girl turns around, her hair falling over her shoulders. “What?”

But Hecate has already disappeared.

**

In late June, Hecate begins her annual clear-out of the Potions store cupboard.

The use of outdated ingredients, even in low-grade potions, can have disastrous results. As such, Hecate keeps a log of each ingredient’s harvest date, as well as of its preparation date and projected expiry date, and each summer spends weeks on end reviewing her inventory, disposing of expired stock, and replacing the necessary items. Miss Gossamer, the botanist, is occasionally of some help in this process. However, like most of the staff, she is absent for much of the summer—and, anyway, Hecate prefers to do her own harvesting.

It is a quiet, solitary task.

On one drowsy Wednesday afternoon, Hecate is startled out of her solitude by a knock at the cupboard door.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Heart racing, Hecate whips her head around to see Ms. Hubble standing in the doorway.

“The classroom door was open,” Ms. Hubble says, nodding toward the room behind her. “Sorry if I startled you.”

“You did nothing of the sort,” Hecate says, clinging to the rails of her ladder and attempting to compose herself, a task made difficult by the fact that she’d spilled the jar of frog’s eyes she’d been holding and now has a number of tiny eyeballs rolling around inside the sleeves of her dress.

“Well—” Ms. Hubble says, pulling a face. “Those certainly are pungent, aren’t they.” She steps forward and makes to begin picking up the eyeballs that have fallen to the floor under the ladder. “Here, let me—“

Hecate waves her hand. The eyeballs—including the ones up her sleeve—vanish away.

“Right.” Ms. Hubble straightens, looking oddly resigned. After a moment, she walks over to one of the shelves and begins inspecting a box of dragonfly wings. Hecate watches her warily, but she doesn’t make any move to touch it. Still, the interest makes Hecate feel vaguely self-conscious.

“Was there something you wanted?” Hecate asks, busying herself with marking down a jar of frog’s eyes on her list of ingredients to harvest.

“Oh. Yes. I’d wondered,” Ms. Hubble begins slowly, as if she’s not quite sure she wants to finish the thought, “…whether you’d given any more thought to the arrangement I’d suggested, that day at the museum. The ‘knowledge exchange,’ I suppose?”

Blinking in surprise, Hecate turns back to look down at Ms. Hubble, who’s fiddling with the hem of her shirt near a shelf of dragon’s liver.

Hecate had read the book on telephones, of course, and had transferred it back to the Hubbles’ rooms before the date stamped on the card in the inside cover. But, as she’d heard no more about it, she’d thought Ms. Hubble had lost interest in the idea. (In Hecate).

“It’s only—I’m trying to get my lesson plans together for next year,” Ms. Hubble is saying hastily. “And I could talk to Dimity, of course, if you’re not—if you’d rather—” She runs a hand through her hair. “I _do_ talk to her, as you know, unofficially. But, _officially,_ as I’d asked you first, and, well, you’re _here_ and she’s in Wiltshire with her family, I thought…” She shrugs awkwardly.

Long shards of sunlight fall from the narrow windows above the shelves, dusty and yellow, cutting Ms. Hubble’s body in two.

Hecate thinks about the upcoming quinquennial review, and about the swarm of letters protesting Ms. Hubble’s presence flapping about the mail room last year, and about how Ursula Hallow’s name had been on at least a dozen of them.

She thinks about how this could be one more thing—in the vast sea of unknown that is the next school year—that she just might be able to control.

Hecate’s shoulders square. “I am…amenable,” she says. The words feel foreign and metallic on her tongue, like she’d bitten into unripe fruit.

Ms. Hubble’s whole face changes, going wide and bright. “Really?” She grins, and then immediately and unsuccessfully attempts to quell the expression. “Great. That’s…really great. Are you free on Fridays? Millie has swim class in the village Friday mornings.”

Forgoing a morning of inventory and harvesting would set Hecate back, but not irreparably. She nods. “That is acceptable.”

“Great,” Ms. Hubble says, again. “See you then.”

“Indeed.”

**

On Friday morning, Hecate transfers to the stretch of corridor just outside the Hubbles’ rooms.

And then she stands there for long minutes, tapping her fingers against her timepiece, trying to convince herself of the merits of knocking on the door.

When she finally does, the answer is immediate.

“Miss Hardbroom,” Ms. Hubble says, a little breathless, standing in the doorway in an overlarge green jumper, her hair more unruly than usual. There is a blob of what looks like marmalade on one of her sleeves. “I thought you might have forgotten.”

“No.”

Ms. Hubble blinks. “Right. Well. Come in.”

She steps aside to let Hecate through, and then shuts the door behind them, hurrying away again to clear the remains of breakfast dishes from a round wooden table.

Hecate stands stiffly in the entryway, surveying the space. To the right of the doorway is a small kitchen, where Ms. Hubble is now filling the basin of a sink with water. To Hecate’s left is a large fireplace and a leather sofa strewn with mismatched cushions. Along the wall opposite her, two tall bookcases stand on either side of a wide window. The shelves are cramped with books and photographs and collections of odds and ends: stones and seashells and dried flowers in empty jam jars. On some of the lower shelves, paints and brushes and pencils spill from stiff paper boxes. Coloured drawings are stuck in a haphazard fashion all over the stone walls, washed out by the bright sunlight pouring through the window glass.

“Sit anywhere you like,” Ms. Hubble calls.

Hecate eyes the sofa suspiciously before moving along to the pair of armchairs arranged at its far end nearer the hearth. One of the chairs is mostly full of what looks like half-folded laundry, and on the other sits a tin of assorted biscuits. Hecate moves the tin to the end table and takes a seat.

“Sorry about the mess,” Ms. Hubble says, drying her hands on a tea towel as she crosses the room. “I’d say it’s because Mildred had a minor crisis this morning involving a missing swimming costume and burnt toast…but, really, it’s always like this.” She flops down onto the sofa, apparently uncaring of the three cushions and one small sock she’d sat on in the process.

Hecate cannot say she’s surprised, so she says nothing at all.

The conversation is slow to begin, and a bit stilted, but the awkwardness dissipates some as they go along. Hecate had prepared herself to discuss appropriate lessons and exam schedules and marking rubrics, but instead they fall into a discussion of the book Ms. Hubble had gotten from the library; they talk of telegraphs and switchboards and operating companies, and then of the telephone on Ada’s desk that looks so different from the one Ms. Hubble carries as to appear to belong to a separate species of thing entirely.

“Yes, I had wondered about that,” Ms. Hubble says, munching on a bourbon biscuit from the tin. “I noticed it during my interview last summer, but I didn’t really think to ask, at the time.”

Hecate _had_ asked, during one of her weekly teas with Ada last spring, after encountering a photograph of a similar device in Ms. Hubble’s library book.

“Apparently,” Hecate says, “it belonged to Miss Cackle’s mother—the headmistress before her. It is a sort of…_fashion…_among wellborn witching families to acquire Ordinary novelties for the sake of ornamentation. There was a time about a century ago when the telephone became popular among that circle. All of the progressive wellborn families had set about acquiring one, including the Cackles.

“The difficulty was in connecting them. Using Ordinary telephone wires would have been impossible without attracting the attention of Ordinary telephone operators, and the spells that allowed communication without cables were similar enough to those involved in mirroring that the telephone was made redundant. Some of the families with spelled telephones kept them and still use them occasionally, but they never quite gained the popularity that was attained by the camera—which was acquired from the Ordinary world around the same time, but did not have the same operational issues.”

Ms. Hubble blinks. “I think that’s more words than you’ve ever spoken at once,” she says, after a moment. “To me, anyway.”

Hecate’s cheeks heat, and she feels as though she’s given something away—though what that might be, she does not know. The interest she’d displayed in Ada’s telephone had been perfectly natural, and she can hardly help it if she has a particularly good head for details. She twists her fingers in her lap.

“Fascinating, though,” Ms. Hubble says, continuing to munch on her biscuit. “Explains a lot.” She stares off into space for a moment, apparently lost in thought. “Though now you’ve got me wondering how they were able to wire the school for electricity. Seems like it would cause similar problems to the telephone, as far as Ordinary attention goes…”

Then, shaking her head, she holds out the biscuit tin. “You sure you won’t have one?”

Hecate is about to decline the offer for the fourth time when the door bursts open, and a very soggy Mildred Hubble appears.

“Gosh, is that the time already?” Ms. Hubble asks, wide-eyed as she glances at the watch on her wrist.

“Hi, Mum,” the girl calls over her shoulder, her face screwing up as she pushes the heavy door shut again. A pair of bright pink swimming goggles dangle from one wrist. “Hi, Miss Hardbroom,” she adds, leaning back against the door once she’s wrestled it into submission, apparently entirely unsurprised to see Hecate in her home.

After a moment’s indecision, Hecate nods stiffly in her direction.

“Hi, tiny love,” Ms. Hubble says, a smile colouring her voice. 

The girl shrugs her rucksack into a heap on the floor, kicks off her shoes, and runs over to give her mother a hug, her wet hair leaving splotches on the collar of Ms. Hubble’s denim blouse where it peeks out of the jumper.

“How was it?” Ms. Hubble asks.

The girl flops onto the sofa next to her mother. “Good,” she says, sticking her feet in the air and wiggling her toes experimentally before reaching up to remove her socks. She throws them onto the rug. “We’re learning the breaststroke. That’s the one that looks like a sea turtle. And at the end we got to dive for rings and I got three—that was almost the most in the whole class! But Jemima got four so she got a sticker with a mermaid on.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yep. And now I'm hungry.”

Ms. Hubble grins. “Well, why don’t you go wash up and then we’ll see what we have for lunch. There’s that chicken from last night. Or I can make you tuna and sweetcorn!” she calls after the girl, who has already begun skipping down the short corridor leading toward the rear of the flat.

Hecate, feeling painfully out of place, stands. “I should be going.”

Ms. Hubble frowns. “Are you sure? I haven’t shown you the pedal generator yet. You’re welcome to—”

“Quite sure,” Hecate interrupts and then surprises herself by adding, “Perhaps next week,” and meaning it. Though the morning had not gone precisely as Hecate had expected, she nevertheless finds that she is not as averse to the other woman’s company as she had once believed. And perhaps next week they might actually manage to get to the point of reviewing Ms. Hubble’s lesson plans.

Ms. Hubble looks surprised herself. “Alright, then. Next week.”

Hecate walks to the door and then pauses. There are words on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t quite seem to speak them.

“Have a nice afternoon,” Ms. Hubble says cheerily.

Keeping her eyes on the doorframe, Hecate nods once, and then hastily opens the door before she can find herself even more out of her depth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter Four

Hecate has always disliked July. The long, hot days seemed to sink under her skin, the hours buzzing there like insects so that in the night time, in the empty castle, in her quiet rooms, sleep came in fits and starts, if at all. There was too much time to dwell on thoughts: to fall back into conversations that had ended years ago, trying to understand the hooks they’d left inside her—or to be dragged forward into things that had not yet happened, desperate to know the shape of them before they hit her.

But, strangely, this summer Hecate finds herself losing time instead.

The hours dissolve between fixed points:

she’s watching Ms. Hubble in her classroom, powering a string of lights with her pedal generator;

she’s in the fields picking wild daisies for a calming potion when a small body nearly collides with hers, and she finds herself with an eager, if clumsy, assistant;

she’s watching a paper bag inflate as it spins in a ‘microwave,’ trying hard not to jump at the popping noises;

she’s sitting at the Hubbles’ kitchen table, giving Ms. Hubble’s lesson plans what Ms. Hubble calls a ‘witch’s-eye view;’

she’s reading a book called _A Lightbulb Moment: A Brief History of Electricity_ by candlelight before bed.

Once, she goes several days without thinking of the impending review at all, and when she realizes this it startles her so badly she rewrites the whole of her upper years’ Potions capstone assignment as penance.

Near the end of the month, there’s a heat wave. The temperature doesn’t leave the thirties for nearly two weeks and the castle is stifling, even in Hecate’s normally draughty rooms. On one particularly awful afternoon, Hecate brews a Polar Ice potion and leaves vials of it on shelves and tables to waft cold air about the place, but the heat is still so unbearable that she briefly entertains the idea of filling the bath with ice water and hibernating there until January.

When she arrives at the Hubbles’ rooms that Friday morning, she finds both Hubbles with their heads in the ice box, the air around them fogged from the chilling spell. A box of defrosting fish fingers threatens to tumble out into the kitchen floor.

“Close that at once,” Hecate says. “If the spell is exposed to excessive heat, it can’t regenerate.”

“And a good morning to you, too,” Ms. Hubble says, though she does move to close the ice box door. Her hair is piled atop her head, loose strands stuck to her cheeks with sweat.

“What would happen then?” Mildred asks, ringing out a wet flannel in the sink before proceeding to lay the whole thing over her face. It drips sluggishly onto her pyjamas.

“The ice box would cease to function,” Hecate says, feeling slightly absurd addressing a faceless child. She grabs the girl by her elbow before she can walk into the kitchen table.

“Why couldn’t they just put the spell back on?”

“You don’t—it’s not as if—the ice box _is_ the spell.” Hecate frowns at the girl in consternation. “It doesn’t—You can’t just—”

“Alright, Mildred,” Ms. Hubble interrupts, guiding the girl away from a stand lamp. “Why don’t you go and get ready? Quick like a bunny!”

Mildred scurries off blindly in the direction of her bedroom.

“And take that thing off your face before you kill yourself,” Ms. Hubble calls pleasantly after her, before turning to address Hecate. “We were thinking of getting out of here. Millie’s swim class has been called off, so we thought we’d go for a drive. Maybe to a museum or somewhere with air con?”

Hecate opens her mouth and then closes it again. “Yes. Fine,” she says stiffly, after a moment, before making to walk towards the door.

“What are you—?” Ms. Hubble starts. She frowns at Hecate. “That was me inviting you to _come with us_, you goose! It is still Friday morning, isn’t it?”

Hecate stares at her.

Ms. Hubble shakes her head. “Sorry. I should have been more clear.” She wrinkles her nose. “But did you really think I’d just announce our plans and then leave you behind?”

Hecate is saved from having to answer by Mildred’s return. The girl has changed into a loose summer dress—orange, printed with small yellow and purple flowers—that clashes terribly with her hair.

“Have you got anything more Ordinary to put on?” Ms. Hubble asks, shooting a glance at Hecate’s long black frock as she switches off the lights and gathers up her things to leave. “I’d let you borrow something of mine, only I’m afraid it’d be a bit small on you.”

Hecate waves her hand, transforming the frock into a pair of black trousers and a deep blue polo neck.

She ducks her head at the Hubbles’ joint stares.

“I should really get used to that,” Ms. Hubble says, after a moment. Then she makes a face. “Are you sure you don’t want something with a bit less fabric? It _is_ thirty-three degrees out.”

Hecate quells her with a glare.

“Alright, alright.” Ms. Hubble raises her hands in defeat. “Come on, then. Let’s get out of here.”

There’s a brief argument over whether they’ll fly or drive, which Ms. Hubble wins by asking how Hecate expects to fit three people on one broomstick.

And so Hecate finds herself cramped into the passenger’s seat of the Hubbles’ automobile—a beaten-up old thing with chipped paint and corduroy upholstery that Mildred announces is called ‘Charles.’ The interior is stifling, the air thick and hot and hung with the faint scent of greasy chips.

“Is it a custom among Ordinary people to assign silly names to inanimate objects?” Hecate asks, a bit primly, as she fumbles with the strap she is meant to be fastening over her lap.

She drops the metal clip when it burns her fingers, and she’s nearly hit full in the face when the strap reels itself back into the wall.

Hecate scowls at the muffled laughter coming from the seat behind.

“You could say that, I suppose,” Ms. Hubble says from the driver’s chair. “Here—” She reaches across Hecate and takes the clip carefully by its plastic top, pulling slack into the strap before bringing it down over Hecate’s lap and pressing the metal bit into its fastener. “Should’ve warned you about that—sorry. It always gets hot in the summers.”

Hecate feels the gentleness of the gesture like a sudden sting in the back of her throat, but Ms. Hubble seems not to notice.

The strap is odd and snug across Hecate’s chest. She settles, though, when she finds she can still breathe easily.

A silence has fallen in the small space; Hecate looks up to see Ms. Hubble watching her, as if waiting for some signal. Unsure, she gives a curt nod.

It seems the right thing to have done, because Ms. Hubble twists the keys and the engine starts with a small kick.

Hecate grips at the door handle.

The driving itself is not _unpleasant, _exactly. Hecate had ridden in a winter sleigh once, when she was very young, and the experience of motion is not unlike that—though of course the movement is much swifter.

She watches as fields and trees and Ordinary power lines pass in a blur outside the window. There are little vents in the space in front of her that blow lukewarm air in her direction—“not as cool as it was in his younger days, but it’s something,” Ms. Hubble comments on the subject, and Hecate struggles to understand her until she remembers that the ‘he’ in question is the automobile. She rolls her eyes.

“—I was watching Horrible Histories,” Mildred is saying from the back. “That’s a television programme about history. And there was this one about the Victorians, and how they thought it was rude to talk about legs—even _table_ legs. And so they couldn’t even say ‘trousers.’ They called them _the lower necessities_.” The girl stops to giggle at that. “And I was wondering if that’s why witches never wear trousers. Well, except Miss Drill. But she teaches P.E., so that makes sense.”

Hecate doesn’t realize she’s being addressed, and so continues her window-watching. They’re passing the outskirts of the village, where thatch-roofed houses stand behind a low stone wall, bright flowers blooming in boxes under their windows. A man on an Ordinary bicycle rides by, the tails of his tweed jacket flapping in the wind.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

“What?”

“Why don’t witches wear trousers?”

Hecate turns over her shoulder and just raises her eyebrows significantly at the girl.

Mildred rolls her eyes. “I _know_ you’re wearing trousers right _now,” _she says, with an impatient huff. “But you’re not dressing as a witch right now.”

“It’s tradition,” Hecate replies simply, facing front again.

“But _why, _though?”

Hecate widens her eyes at Ms. Hubble in exasperation.

Ms. Hubble catches sight of the expression out of the corner of her eye and smirks. “She’ll only keep asking, so you’d best think of an answer.”

Hecate sighs.

**

They end up at a place called Stratford Hall, a museum displaying the eclectic arts and artefacts collection of some deceased Ordinary lord. The museum is housed in a converted manor house: all marble halls and grand staircases and long windows overlooking well-tended grounds.

Indoors, it is wonderfully cool. Mildred rushes over to hug one of the marble pillars in the entrance hall, pressing her body up against the cold stone. She gets immediately told off by a museum worker.

They wander through halls of Ordinary maps and navigational instruments; of old suits of armour; of portraits in gilded frames. Mildred has a device hooked into her ears with a voice that guides her through the exhibits, telling the stories of the things they encounter. Occasionally, she will pause and announce to Hecate and her mother an interesting fact she’s just heard, though, especially in the portrait hall, she remains generally silent and appears almost entranced by her surroundings.

Their last visit is to an exhibit on the development of the steam engine.

Hecate is fascinated despite herself.

The hall is filled with small replicas of early boilers and reciprocating engines and diagrams of the thermodynamic cycle. They step off into a side room to watch a moving picture that describes the use of steam power in the Ordinary Industrial Revolution; Hecate becomes so lost in it that Ms. Hubble has to tap her on the shoulder when it’s finished to bring her back to reality.

“Did you know,” Mildred whispers softly, as they watch a model train make its way over the tracks that wind round the edges of the room and up into the air above them, suspended on silver wires. “Miss Hardbroom, did you know that when they first started having people ride trains, some people were afraid they might melt from going so fast? It was the fastest people had ever moved.”

She says it with such awe in her voice that Hecate finds herself replying. “No,” she says, equally softly. “I did not.”

They leave the museum in the early afternoon, and Ms. Hubble drives them to the nearby village. They walk around the shops until the heat gets too much and then take shelter in a small air-conditioned café on the high street.

Inside, Mildred stands with her nose pressed to the glass of the display case, inspecting a selection of pastries with wide eyes.

“We’ll have two iced buns, please,” Ms. Hubble says to the girl behind the counter. She looks at Hecate expectantly.

“Oh. I—I haven’t any…” Hecate starts, flustered. She’d not thought to bring any Ordinary currency with her—and, even if she had, she’d not spend it buying herself sweets.

“That’s alright. My treat.” Ms. Hubble smiles gently.

“I—” Hecate looks between the case, and Ms. Hubble, and the shop girl, who is now wearing the impatient smile of someone forced to be polite to irritating people.

“Make that three iced buns, I think,” Ms. Hubble says, after it is clear Hecate cannot.

They sit at a table in a quiet corner near a large potted ficus. Ms. Hubble sets three small white plates in front of them, each containing a bun topped with light blue icing.

Hecate stares at hers for what she realizes must be a long while, for when she looks up again, Mildred has nearly finished hers and is attempting to wipe a splodge of icing from the front of her dress with a paper napkin.

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” Ms. Hubble says, over the soft music being played at them from a radio near the café door, “but I think you’ll like it. It’s lemon icing.”

Feeling somehow at once disagreeable and self-conscious, Hecate heaves a sigh, lifts the bun to her mouth, and takes a bite.

It’s been so long since she’s had sweet things that she’d almost forgotten the taste. She widens her eyes without meaning to, and then immediately darts a glance at Ms. Hubble, waiting for her to say something smug.

But Ms. Hubble appears to have become suddenly interested in the ficus, and asks Mildred if she can think of any other kinds of trees she’d seen grown indoors.

**

They drive back to Cackle’s in the late afternoon. Storm clouds have gathered during their time in the café, and by the time they pull onto the main road the rain has started.

Hecate finds she quite enjoys the sounds of the raindrops as they tap against the windows and roof of the automobile. Her thoughts drift pleasantly as the road begins to wind up the mountain, the evening light falling grey and quiet through the trees.

“What would you think,” Ms. Hubble begins then, breaking the long silence in a low voice. Mildred has fallen asleep behind them with her head against the window. “…about organizing a trip to the museum with the girls?”

Hecate’s first thought, to her own surprise, is that it might be exciting for the girls to see the steam engine exhibit.

Hecate’s second, less surprising thought is that bringing upwards of ninety young witches to an Ordinary museum near an Ordinary village was likely to be an unmitigated disaster.

Hecate’s third thought is that, considering Cackle’s’ unwelcome guests for the upcoming school year, unmitigated disasters must be avoided at all cost.

“Hecate?” Ms. Hubble asks. She’s started calling her ‘Hecate’ recently, after remarking that saying _Miss _all the time made her feel as though her primary school headmistress was haunting her kitchen, and that somebody with such a lovely name ought to be called by it, if Hecate would let her.

“You awake over there?” Ms. Hubble glances over before returning her attention to the road.

Hecate closes her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter Five

The summer holidays draw to a close.

Hecate finds she is more-than-usually dreading the start of term, when Friday mornings will be occupied once more with classes, and the castle will be full again, and Hecate, who is surely less pleasant to be around than anyone else who might perform the same role in Ms. Hubble’s knowledge exchange, will be made quite as redundant as the telephone.

So, she is prepared for the end. But perhaps not quite as well-prepared as she might have thought.

A week before the start of term, Ada calls a staff meeting to discuss the quinquennial review—and, more particularly, to make plans for how best to deal with Ursula Hallow’s presence at the school.

“I must impress upon you,” she says, standing in front of the assembled staff, sunlight gathering in the window behind, “the importance of _prudence, proactivity, _and_ professionalism. _We simply cannot allow Miss Hallow to catch so much as a glimpse of ineptitude.”

She goes on to explain that the impending classroom audits and staff competency interviews would count for over half of the school’s aggregate score, that each of them must do their part to ensure Cackle’s success, that the “fate of the school rests in their hands.”

The staff, many of whom are fresh off holidays in sunny locales, look as if this is all a bit much to be getting on with at eight in the morning.

And as Hecate watches Miss Hubble’s face shift from quiet attention to troubled surprise to consternation, it occurs to her that she had not given enough thought to Ms. Hubble’s perspective.

Afterwards, she stands in the corridor outside the staff room, avoiding Ms. Hubble’s eyes.

“You knew, didn’t you,” Ms. Hubble says, running an agitated hand through her hair. “Miss Cackle said…” She shakes her head. “Is that why you agreed?” She looks at Hecate, lost. “To the knowledge exchange? So you could be sure I wouldn’t ruin Cackle’s’ reputation in front of this Ursula Hallow person?”

The thing of it is: it had been.

It _had _been, in fact, a part of Hecate’s reasoning in agreeing to the arrangement. But only a part of it. And she doesn’t know how to say—how to _explain_ that, in the weeks since, she has learned that she needn’t have worried. That Ms. Hubble has as good a chance as any of them at scoring well in the review. That, if she doesn’t, it won’t be for lack of talent or preparation.

Hecate doesn’t know how to explain about the passing of time; or about the fixed points of Friday mornings; or about the fact that, while she might have agreed to begin the exchange for selfish reasons, she had decided to _continue_ it for different, even more selfish reasons—a line of logic that does not make sense, even when she tries to explain it to herself inside her own head.

So she just says, “Yes.”

And Ms. Hubble is still talking, not loudly, not angrily, just—just quietly, like she’s tired. But it’s still enough so that she doesn’t hear Hecate at first.

And then she stops and says, “You—_Yes_?”

And it’s like all the words Hecate knows are stuck somewhere in her throat. She feels ill, dizzy, like she’s forgotten to breathe.

Ms. Hubble sighs. She won’t look at Hecate’s face. “Well. Alright, then,” she says.

And then she turns. And then she walks away.

**

The review is announced to the students in assembly on the first day of term and, once it is made clear that the results would in no way affect their scholastic records, the girls appear to treat the prospect with relative indifference.

The same could not be said for the staff.

They receive a tentative schedule for the classroom audits on the second afternoon of term. Afterwards, Hecate encounters Miss Drill muttering to herself in the halls, Miss Gossamer scribbling furiously in a notebook in the staff room amid a mountain of crumpled paper, and Mister Rowan Webb holding a conversation with Miss Bat in which every other sentence was punctuated with ‘oh dear.’

She does not see Ms. Hubble at all.

**

The reviewers arrive on the following Monday. The entire school gathers in the main courtyard, watching the descent of three broomsticks from the eastern sky.

The first to alight is a thin, grey, weedy old witch called Almira Hackensack. Though a good foot shorter than Hecate, she somehow manages to seem as if she’s peering down her small nose as she introduces herself. Hecate notes with some disdain that her wool cape smells of unwashed litterbox.

The second is a wizard, a balding man in tweed robes who cheerily announces himself to the crowd at large as “Bakewell, no relation!”—to which a gormless little first year asks: “To who?”

The wizard blinks several times behind his smudged wire-rimmed spectacles. “Why, to the _tart,_ of course!”

This sends the fourth years into a sniggering fit that Hecate is only just too late to cover with a Silencing spell.

By the time the third broom lands, Hecate is already well on her way to a very black mood.

Unfortunately, the third broom carries Miss Ursula Hallow.

She steps onto the grass with an elegant shift of her traveling cloak. Underneath, she wears a tailored set of grey pinstriped robes that brush over the ground as she walks. Pinned to her collar is a large brooch—a silver fox with sapphires for eyes.

She surveys the crowd, her sharp gaze cutting through the murmurs that had risen up around her arrival.

She does not introduce herself, just sweeps right up to Ada, dips her head in a bow, and says, “Well met, cousin.”

Ada gives her a tolerant smile. “Well met, Ursula.”

“Shall we take this inside?” Miss Hallow asks smoothly. “I wouldn’t want to keep the girls from their lessons.”

Then, without waiting for a response, she proceeds towards the castle entrance. When she reaches the door, she turns around and raises her eyebrow…as if inviting Ada into her own school.

Hecate feels bile rising at the back of her throat.

From the dark looks on the other teachers’ faces as they lead the girls inside, she imagines she is not alone in the feeling.

**

Though their opening address to the school had promised ‘the utmost discretion and decorum’ as they carried out their duties, the reviewers’ presence hangs around the castle like a bad smell.

Almira Hackensack begins an audit of the school’s records, rifling through the cabinets in Ada’s office and disappearing into the dungeons underneath the school to review archived documents from centuries past. She pesters Ada with endless pointed questions and seems to amuse herself by lurking on the edges of private conversations. Perhaps worst of all, she makes a nasty habit of transferring into the upper corridors at the crow call for what she terms ‘the necessary supervision’—which really consists less of supervision than it does frightening the life out of the students as they walk between classes.

One August afternoon, following the failure of more than half of her first-year Potions class to arrive for lessons, Hecate is forced to waste valuable instructing time incanting a Location spell. She follows it to one of the storage cupboards outside the Chanting classroom. The missing girls have sequestered themselves in a dusty corner of the cupboard behind an old harpsichord, apparently refusing to walk the corridors between there and the Potions lab for fear of encountering Miss Hackensack.

Hecate, irritated, bemused, and covered in cobwebs, has just begun to take the students to task for truancy when she realizes they’ve gone wide-eyed with fright: Miss Hackensack has transferred in behind her and is sneering at the girls over Hecate’s shoulder.

“Miss Hackensack,” Hecate begins, a little startled herself, though she works hard not to show it. “What is the meaning of this?”

The old witch gives a slow, cruel smile. “Why, _supervising,_ Miss Hardbroom. Only supervising.” She turns her beady eyes to each of the girls in turn. One, a Flora Trellis, begins to cry.

Hecate waves her hand and transfers the lot of them back to the Potions lab at once.

**

Mister Bakewell, who has been put in charge of curriculum review during summer term, is a more affable—if not more welcome—presence.

A week into September, he begins holding student interviews in an empty classroom near the dining hall. Word spreads that the interviewed students are being provided with Eccles cakes as a prize, which Hecate denounces as a cheap bribe.

“You may be right, Hecate,” Ada says, after Hecate has run out of words for the sort of wizard Mister Bakewell is showing himself to be. “However, there is very little we can do about it.”

Miss Bat, who has been serving as silent advocate for the students during their interviews, adds, “And I must admit, the cakes are very good.”

Hecate shoots her a look of disgust.

To make matters worse, the man seems to have taken a particular interest in Hecate and insists upon sitting next to her at meals. He talks endlessly of his days as a younger wizard, when he had been what he calls ‘a bit of a potions maverick’ before having lost his sense of smell in a synchronized broomstick accident.

Hecate thinks warmly of death.

One evening, as Mister Bakewell is unsuccessfully attempting to engage her in conversation about the exemplary flavour of Miss Tapioca’s creamed spinach, Hecate happens to catch Ms. Hubble’s eye across the staff table. She seems to be struggling to contain her laughter, and they share a sardonic look at Mister Bakewell’s expense—before remembering they aren’t speaking. Hecate stares down at the platter of green glop on her plate, and when she looks up again, Ms. Hubble has turned away, drawn into conversation by Mildred.

Hecate wonders idly why she never seems able to keep the few people she actually wants.

**

Summer fades slowly into autumn. The forest trees burn amber and gold, and the air turns crisp and honeyed. Outside in the fields, the girls play at wood-sprites, using wind spells to chase fallen leaves into curling patterns through the air, trapping each other in imagined in-between worlds—until Miss Bat marches out in her woollen cloak and earmuffs and tells them off for inviting the wrath of the fairies.

In mid-October, Ursula Hallow begins the classroom audits.

Miss Drill is the first to be reviewed. She spends the preceding week jittery and uncharacteristically snappish, and Hecate expects more of the same after Ursula Hallow’s first day attending classes.

That afternoon, however, Miss Drill walks into the staff room with an odd look on her face.

“So, how’d it go?” Ms. Hubble asks, meeting Miss Drill in the doorway with a cup of tea.

“Weird. Just…really weird,” Miss Drill says, taking the teacup and holding it so limply she nearly spills it all over her boots. “Not _bad._ Just weird.”

“Weird, how?” Miss Mayweather asks from her chair by the fire.

“She was…nice? Asked me questions about how the students were doing, what sorts of things they were learning, how they performed in school exhibitions…” Miss Drill shakes her head. “And then, the rest of the time, she just talked to me about broomsticks.”

“Broomsticks?”

“Yeah. Broomstick maintenance.” She shrugs. “Like I said, weird.”

“Maybe she was testing your knowledge, you know, to see if you were qualified to teach?” Miss Gossamer suggests.

“Yeah, but isn’t that old Bakewell’s job, with the competency interviews next term?” Miss Drill responds, settling into an armchair with her tea.

No one seems to know what to say to that.

The audits continue in much the same way, each teacher reporting back to the rest of the staff that Miss Hallow had been civil, knowledgeable, and respectful throughout the audit, often taking the time to engage the teachers in pleasant conversation on their subject matter, and to offer the students advice about academics and career plans.

Hecate’s own review, in late November, is as baffling as it is banal.

Miss Hallow arrives early to the classroom each morning of the audit week, greets Hecate politely, and makes conversation that usually includes mention of Hecate’s published works, or of Hecate’s reputation as a skilled potioneer, or of Hecate’s legendary ability to control her classroom.

As the girls arrive, Miss Hallow inquires after their studies, their parents, their interests, their extra-curricular activities. She manages to sound interested in all of it, even Esther Wellborn’s over-eager recounting of the latest meeting of the school hat-making club.

When class is in session, Miss Hallow sits at the back on a stool, observing silently and writing notes on her clipboard with an eagle-feather quill—which Hecate would find unnerving, except that Miss Hallow seems to punctuate each note with a friendly upturn of her lip.

Hecate doesn’t know what to think.

She is especially bemused when, after a mishap in which the fourth-years spill Quick-Ice potion onto the classroom stairs and begin sledding down on their cutting boards before Hecate has time to properly intervene, Miss Hallow only shakes her head and commends Hecate on her students’ creativity.

No, Hecate really doesn’t know what to think. She feels almost disappointed to have spent so much time worrying over something that had turned out to be rather trivial.

“Maybe she’s not as bad as we’d thought,” Hecate hears Miss Mayweather whispering to Miss Gossamer in the corridor one afternoon.

And this seems to be the general sentiment throughout the school: that, while Miss Hackensack was admittedly terrifying, Mister Bakewell was pleasant enough, and Miss Hallow was, in fact, charming, intelligent, and amiable.

Even Ada seems hopeful that she may have been too quick to judge her cousin’s intentions.

Hecate, regardless of Miss Hallow’s puzzlingly cordial behaviour, remains unconvinced. However, after having argued the subject with Ada upwards of five times with little success, she resigns herself to Ada’s sudden determination to remain open-minded and decides that she will simply have to keep a watchful eye on their unwelcome guests herself.

**

During the last week of summer term, Hecate settles into the quietest corner of the staff room to begin the marathon task of marking exams. She generally attempts to keep ahead of things by beginning her marking immediately after each year’s exam has been sat. However, there is always the inevitable end-of-term disaster (or three), and of course her usual duties do not disappear simply because it would be convenient. So, by Thursday—four exams in—she is, predictably, behind.

She has set about marking the third years’ written responses, and is just thinking that if she has to write the words _poor effort, see me_ one more time they will likely be the only words she remembers from the English language, when she looks up to see Mildred Hubble standing there on the rug.

The girl is watching her silently, biting at her thumbnail, a sort of open curiosity on her face. She’s dressed in a fair isle jumper with little foxes patterned around the neckline, her hair bound back into a messy French braid, her hands flecked with what looks like blue paint. Hecate notices she’s grown an inch or two since the summer, a fact that settles oddly painfully in her chest.

“Hi, Miss Hardbroom,” the girl says, taking a few cautious steps toward Hecate’s table.

It takes Hecate three tries to say “Hello.”

“I know you’re busy with exams,” the girl starts. “Mum is too. She—erm…” She cuts herself off and looks away awkwardly, her gaze drifting toward the high windows where fat flakes of snow are falling past the foggy glass.

Then she seems to shrug her shoulders at herself before stepping forward again. “This is for you.”

Hecate watches as Mildred sets a small, messily-wrapped parcel on the table in front of her. It’s red and box-shaped, and roughly the length of Hecate’s hand.

She stares down at it, her mind going blank.

“Well—open it!” Mildred urges, bouncing on her toes and nearly knocking over Hecate’s half-drunk cup of tea with her elbow.

Slowly, Hecate reaches for the package. It’s heavy for its size. She splits the tape and carefully peels back the wrapping.

It reveals a small black box with the image of a steam locomotive embossed across the top.

Hecate’s heart clenches.

It is not entirely impossible, Hecate reminds herself, that she’d drifted off while marking and that this is…some sort of dream.

“It’s a model train!” Mildred says, bobbing by Hecate’s elbow and chewing nervously at the ends of her hair. “Mum and I went back to the gift shop so I could get it for you—remember, when I said I needed the loo again after we’d walked to the car? Only I didn’t.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she reaches over Hecate’s arm, takes the box from its nest of wrapping, and opens it, sliding out a little cushioned drawer. The train sits inside, bright blue and gold against the red silken fabric.

“See? It’s just like the one we saw in the exhibit, only smaller,” she explains. “I don’t know when your birthday is, so I saved it for Christmas. Or Yule, I mean. I know you can give people presents whenever you want, but I think it’s nicer to have them on a holiday. You remember them better that way than if it was just on any day. I think so, anyway.”

She sets the box in front of Hecate once more, directly on top of Olive Ingleside’s mediocre essay on the seven uses of snail slime. Hecate’s _see me _peeks out from under the lid.

“It needs batteries, but I put some in for you.” Mildred looks at her. “I asked Mum and she said you could come and get more if they ran out.”

Hecate looks at Mildred’s eager eyes, and she wants to ask…she doesn’t know what she wants to ask.

_Does your mother know you’re here? _But she must, if she’d given Mildred a message to pass on.

_What does your mother think of you giving gifts to a person she despises? _Which is more to the point, but Hecate doesn’t think she wants to know the answer.

Mildred is watching her with that curious expression again.

“Miss Hardbroom?” she asks softly. “Why don’t you come and visit Mum anymore?”

Hecate’s mouth opens, then closes again. “I…you should ask your mother…that question,” she says, addressing her answer to the train on the table.

Mildred clambers into the chair next to hers. “I _have_ asked her. But she doesn’t really answer me. She just says _It’s just one of those things, _which doesn’t explain anything. I know she’s sad about it. She pretends she isn’t, but she is.”

They sit in silence for a while after that, Hecate’s heart beating heavy and sluggish in her chest.

“Do you like it?”

Hecate is taken aback for a moment before she realizes the girl is talking about the train.

She looks down at it. The gold rims of its chimneys glow in the candlelight.

She can’t remember the last time she’d received a gift from someone who wasn’t Ada.

(Yes she can. Of course she can.)

“I do,” she manages finally.

Mildred grins.

Hecate is about to do something foolish—like apologize for having nothing to give the girl in return, or try to find a way to ask if Mildred wouldn’t like to sit for a while and have some of Miss Tapioca’s ginger biscuits as long as she was careful not to spill any crumbs on the exam papers—when the crow calls for dinner.

**

On midwinter’s day, Hecate rises at her usual time, makes tea in her usual way, fills Morgana’s bowl the usual amount.

She sits at her rough kitchen table, watching the sun rise behind the cloud of steam wafting up from her teacup.

The little blue train sits on a shelf of the bookcase nearest the window in her front room, just to the left of a copy of _607 Uses for Pigeons’ Feet._

The engine had stopped running within a day of its receipt.

Hecate tries not to think what that might mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'll plan to post new chapters on Sundays from here on out--though that may change as schoolwork intensifies.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter Six

January is cold and damp.

A heavy grey silence settles over the empty castle. The near-constant rain seems to seep straight through the walls and into Hecate’s chest, a chill setting in under her ribs that she can’t quite shake. She had intended to spend the month catching up on neglected reading, but makes less progress than she would have liked; she finds her attention drifting, her thoughts unmoored and directionless. Once, she goes eight days without leaving her rooms and only realizes the passage of time when her kitchen herbs wilt from inattention. The experience unnerves her deeply; she feels half-awake and cannot seem to rouse herself.

She is almost relieved when term starts up again, and the halls are once more filled with noise and laughter and forgotten spellbooks.

**

Two weeks into February, the time comes for Cackle’s’ witch ball team to face off once more against Wildwood Witching Academy, their ever-formidable rival.

A buzz of anticipation hums through the school. After Cackle’s’ triumph last year, the team is under tremendous pressure to repeat—not least because winning this match could help them qualify for the Triennial Inter-School Witch Ball Tournament to be held this year at the end of winter term. It is not uncommon, in the week leading up to the match, to hear shouts of _Go Cackle’s! _and _Beat those Wildwood hags!_ addressed to members of the team as they’re spotted in the corridors between classes. Hecate—who has never much cared for witch ball, nor for the hooliganism it seemed to bring out in her students—assigns detentions to the perpetrators, but despairs of gaining any real control after a shout of _Cackle’s for the win! _startles her out of writing her twenty-eighth detention slip of the week.

Hecate has been asked to go along with Miss Drill to the match to help chaperone the team—a task which would usually fall to Miss Mayweather. However, the Spell Science classes were to begin their audits with Miss Hallow the following Monday, and Ada had felt it best to let Miss Mayweather have a restful weekend to prepare.

It is not until that Friday afternoon, when Hecate transfers herself to the courtyard to prepare for departure, that they realize there’s been some sort of misunderstanding.

For there is Ms. Hubble standing by the castle gates: clipboard in hand, a bobble hat pulled on over her windblown hair, marking off members of the team as they arrive.

“Miss Hardbroom,” Miss Drill calls, hurrying over with a sack full of practice balls slung over her shoulder. “Hi, there.” She traces Hecate’s line of sight. “Yeah. Sorry. I’d already asked Julie to come along when Miss Cackle told me she’d asked you. I suppose you could stay behind, if you like. We’ve probably got it covered.”

Hecate, who not two minutes ago had been wishing vainly for something, anything to stop her having to fly across the countryside in the February cold, raises her chin and says, “Indeed I will not.”

Miss Drill sighs, her breath clouding the air in front of her. “Yeah, thought as much,” she mumbles into her shoulder, before looking back up at Hecate. “Well, welcome aboard.” Her smile seems a bit forced. “We’ll be leaving in just a few minutes. Don’t forget your warming spells.”

Soon they are in the air, flying northwest in a V-formation. Ms. Hubble rides tandem with Miss Drill, and Hecate notices she does not have quite the same death-grip on the handle as she had on the museum trip last April. Perhaps Miss Drill has been giving her lessons.

They arrive at Wildwood just after sunset and join the students and staff for a light meal before being shown to their rooms by the school’s deputy head.

The team are to sleep in a converted classroom. The desks have been transferred out to make space for the six sets of wooden bunk beds that line the walls on either side of the room. Long blue velvet curtains have been hung over the windows, thin strips of starlit sky peeking out at their edges. After a brief reminder about following school rules and representing Cackle’s Academy well, the teachers leave the girls to their happy squabbling over sleeping arrangements and continue down the corridor toward their own rooms for the night.

“We hadn’t realized there’d be three of you,” Wildwood’s deputy head, a bespectacled woman called Alice Tadpole, says upon opening the door for them. “So there are only two bedrooms. But we’ve transformed the sofa into a bed as well, so hopefully you’ll all be comfortable. And do let me know if you need anything.”

The rooms are cramped but homely. Miss Tadpole shows them around the small kitchen and points out the bedroom and bathroom doors before wishing them a good night.

The door shuts on the silent rooms. They all stand awkwardly in the entryway for a moment before going their respective ways.

Hecate sees that her things had been transferred up onto the sofa-turned-bed in the front room and resigns herself to a restless night of sleep interrupted by other people’s movements.

**

Hecate rises early the next morning to avoid being caught in her night things by her travelling companions—all the better to see the girls off to breakfast. The team’s room has become a disaster zone overnight, and Hecate orders a tidying of the pyjamas, uniforms, cloaks, blankets, maglets, and hairbrushes that have been thrown over every surface before the girls are permitted to go downstairs.

Breakfast is a nervous affair. Miss Drill walks between the tables in the cavernous Wildwood dining hall, admonishing the girls for either eating too much or too little of their porridge, all the while munching on crusts of wheat toast and tugging repeatedly at the collar of her robes.

Afterwards, the team head to the playing fields, walking down the winding paths behind the school in the grey press of the morning fog. When they reach the fields, the girls shed their cloaks reluctantly, blowing spells into their hands and stomping their feet to keep warm. Miss Drill empties the sack of practice balls onto the frosty grass and directs the team in running laps around the goal posts, their footfalls rhythmic like rain against the hard ground. Ms. Hubble sits on a wooden bench near the sideline, braiding the hair of some of the younger girls so it stays out of their eyes. The sun rises steadily in the clearing sky. The air smells crisp and clean, and Hecate folds her hands into the pockets of her cloak and feels a slow, pleasant calm pressing quietly at her chest.

The stands begin to fill as the morning draws on. Wildwood is a much larger school than Cackle’s, and within an hour there are nearly 300 students and staff assembled to watch the match. At a quarter past ten, the Wildwood team arrive, rosy-cheeked and breathing clouds of mist into the chilly air, having done their preparation elsewhere. The crowd rises to their feet, cheering.

A rules-witch in scarlet robes approaches Miss Drill and asks for the game ball, which Miss Drill produces from a leather pouch. The rules-witch waves her hands over it and nods when the ball glows gold.

The tension in the air is palpable as the start time grows closer. The Cackle’s girls have gone from restless to silent, assembling on the sideline with shaky hands and drawn faces.

“Alright, positions!” calls the rules-witch through a scarlet megaphone. “Positions, everyone!”

The girls huddle together and, on Miss Drill’s nod, shout “Go Cackle’s!” before running out onto the field to take their places.

The rules-witch walks the centre line between the assembled players, megaphone clasped behind her back. Hecate is too far away to hear what she’s saying, but her speech ends with a sharp nod at the girls, who respond with a shouted “Yes, Miss!”

The rules-witch then enters the centre circle along with the two team captains. She puts her whistle between her lips, raises the ball above her head—and for a second the whole field falls silent, as if holding its breath.

And then, with a shrill whistle, the match begins.

The crowd erupts into sound as the players spring to action. Cackle’s win possession of the ball, but are soon challenged by the Wildwood defenders—a string of exceptionally tall, exceptionally fast fifth years that dodge and weave around Cackle’s shooters like ribbons in the wind, blocking their every attempt to move upfield. It becomes immediately evident why this team have won nearly every match they’ve played in the last three years.

As play intensifies, Miss Drill paces up and down the sideline, pulling at her hair, waving her hands, and shouting directions at her players. She seems nearly to have screamed herself hoarse by the time the rules-witch blows her whistle to signal the first quarter.

The girls come running off the field, bending over at the waist and breathing hard. Steam rises from their backs, and the air smells of sweat and grass. They form a ragged queue at the water barrel, filling their tin cups and drinking messily as Miss Drill gathers them in.

“Now, Wildwood is ahead 3-1. We know that. But what do we also know?”

“_That it’s not over ‘till it’s over!_” the girls shout in unison.

“That’s right! So just get back out there and keep doing what you’re doing. Belinda, eyes open for passes from the middle. Geraldine, I want you on that number sixteen. On her tight, d’you hear?”

Geraldine Bluebell, a small fourth-year terror, nods.

“Alright, and Addie, you keep looking for openings. All of you: Be smart, make good choices. Play a good match. You’re still in it!”

The girls shout their team name, raising their hands in the air, before running out onto the field again.

The whistle blows. The Wildwood team, who seem to have gained some sort of second wind over the break, attack with particular ferocity, gaining possession of the ball and scoring almost immediately, despite the best efforts of Geraldine Bluebell and the other Cackle’s defenders. The Cackle’s shooters rise to the occasion, pushing again and again up the field, only to be repeatedly beaten back by Wildwood’s midline. By the time the halftime whistle blows, Wildwood have scored twice more to Cackle’s once, and the Cackle’s players stumble off the field with a defeated air.

“Wildwood: five! Cackle’s: two!” announces the rules-witch.

A group of Wildwood students begin a chanting demonstration at centrefield during the break, entertaining the crowd with an impressive display of tortoise acrobatics.

The Cackle’s players hardly seem to notice. Mud-covered and grass-stained, they sit on the sideline, picking dejectedly at the orange slices given out by Ms. Hubble.

“They’re playing dirty,” Addie Coppercauldron snaps, throwing her orange peel at the rubbish bin near the water barrel. It misses. Hecate vanishes it.

“Yeah, and the rules-witch isn’t calling it!” Beryl Boxwood adds.

“Girls, I know it’s been rough. But we need to keep fighting,” Miss Drill says, which Hecate thinks are odd words coming from a woman who, minutes ago, was screaming things at the rules-witch that would make a warlock blush.

The girls just glare across the field, where the Wildwood team are chattering happily around a conjured fire.

Hecate notes the blue tinge of some of the girls’ lips and thinks perhaps she should conjure a fire as well. However, the rules-witch calls for the start of play before she has the chance.

“Listen to me, you lot,” Miss Drill says to a rather half-hearted attempt at a team huddle. “I know this hasn’t been going the way we wanted. But I want you to know: I am so proud of you. And I believe in you. No matter what. So you get out there, and you show those girls how real witches play ball!”

Play begins. And, at first, it seems as if Wildwood will dominate the second half as it had the first. Cackle’s win possession, but Wildwood push them back again and again.

And then, right before the whistle blows for the third quarter, Beryl Boxwood slips past the Wildwood defences…and scores.

“Wildwood: five! Cackle’s: three!” shouts the rules-witch.

The noise from the crowd is something of a collective wheeze.

Back on the Cackle’s sideline, the third quarter break is a flurry of confusion. The girls talk of possibilities in shell-shocked bursts while Miss Drill reins them in with firm reminders of strategy, though Hecate can see her hands are shaking.

When play resumes, Cackle’s win possession right off and, after a tense seven minutes, manage to score once more.

“Wildwood: five! Cackle’s: four!”

Wildwood win the next tip-off. They press and press until they break through Cackle’s’ midline. Their star shooter, number sixteen, receives a pass and moves to score—only to be knocked out of the way by Geraldine Bluebell.

“Foul!” cries the rules-witch. The crowd roars its approval.

(“Oh, _now_ you’re calling foul, you blind old bat!” Miss Drill yells, as Geraldine Bluebell is ushered to the sideline to sit out her five minutes.)

Wildwood is given possession. Their shooters take the ball up the field, but are forced to pass it back to the midline when Cackle’s’ defence, apparently gifted a spurt of frantic energy by the loss of their leader, effectively swarm the girl in possession like a set of gadflies, blocking her every move.

After regrouping, the Wildwood midline make to pass the ball up again—but it is intercepted in mid-air by Addie Coppercauldron, who in one great, diving leap snatches the ball, twists her body, and manages to magic it upfield in the direction of Belinda Boxwood before landing in a heap on the grass.

Belinda Boxwood scores.

Miss Drill screams, jumping up and down on the sideline, hand-in-hand with Geraldine Bluebell, who is shouting “Yes! Go Belinda! Go Addie! Go Belinda! Go Addie!”

The score is now tied.

The girls line themselves up again, ready for the tip-off. Addie Coppercauldron is limping slightly, but shoots Miss Drill a thumbs-up from her position on the far side of the field.

The crowd is as silent as it had been just before the beginning of the match, the air thick and electric with tension as the rules-witch steps into the centre circle and raises the ball over her head.

The captains lean forward.

The whistle blows.

Wildwood win possession. Angry now, they push up the field, fighting viciously against Cackle’s’ midline.

“Foul!” calls the rules-witch, after one of Wildwood’s shooters rams her shoulder into Addie Coppercauldron, knocking her to the ground once more.

She is slower to get up this time, and when she walks it is with a more pronounced limp than before, but she shakes her head at Miss Drill’s attempts to take her off the field.

Geraldine Bluebell’s five minutes are up. She joins the line of defenders as the players set themselves up once more.

Cackle’s is given possession. Beryl Boxwood attempts to pass the ball upfield to her twin sister. It is knocked out of the air by Wildwood’s number sixteen, who breaks for Cackle’s’ basket. She darts around the midline, weaves through the defence, and is faced with an open field.

She moves to shoot—

Geraldine Bluebell blocks her, this time without raising her arms.

Number sixteen’s elbow collides with her face.

There is a gasp from the crowd as bright red blood spurts from Geraldine’s nose, dribbling down her chin and into her hands.

Number sixteen just stands there, frozen, staring in open-mouthed shock down at Geraldine’s face.

And Geraldine Bluebell, smiling through a mouthful of blood, steals the ball from her motionless hands.

“Addie, heads up!” she shouts, magicking the ball into the air.

Addie catches it, ducks the arms of the Wildwood shooters, and continues upfield.

The noise of the crowd is deafening.

The Wildwood midline scramble back, attempting to intercept Addie.

But they’re too late.

Calling to Beryl, Addie throws.

Beryl catches it, dives past the defenders, and tosses it to her sister from the ground.

Belinda shoots.

The ball arcs through the air—

The crowd screams—

It lands on the rim of the basket, swirling round and round and round—

And, just when it seems it will drop, useless, to the side, it tilts the other way—

And falls into the net.

The rules-witch blows the whistle as the final seconds of the game tick past. The sound is nearly lost as the field breaks into chaos.

There is no noise from the crowd, save for a smattering of polite applause from some of the Wildwood staff.

But the screams of absolute disbelief and delight from the Cackle’s team more than make up for that.

“We won, we won, we won!”

The girls run at each other, linking arms and jumping up and down before collapsing into a laughing heap near centrefield.

Miss Drill, still standing on the sideline, seems in utter shock.

Ms. Hubble, who had spent the last half of the match alternating between chewing at the nail of her left thumb and screaming through her cupped palms, walks up and puts her hand on Miss Drill’s shoulder.

“Did that really just happen?” Miss Drill asks in a low voice, watching the girls dancing around each other on the field.

“Yes, I think it did,” Ms. Hubble says with a smile.

“Bloody bats.” Miss Drill shakes her head, a slow grin building on her face as she turns toward Ms. Hubble and steps into her firm embrace. “Bloody, _grimy_ bats.”

**

“You were playing on a strained ankle, you silly girl!” Hecate admonishes.

She’s standing imperiously over the shoulder of the Wildwood nurse, who’s wrapping bandages around Addie Coppercauldron’s ankle in the first aid tent.

“Yes, but we _won,_ didn’t we?” Geraldine Bluebell says, holding an ice-filled cloth to her freshly-healed broken nose.

Hecate just huffs impatiently.

“All finished, my dear!” the nurse announces cheerily, patting Addie on the knee. “I’ve done what I can about the swelling, but I’m afraid healing spells can’t do much for strains. I’ve given your teacher another vial of the analgesic potion,” she adds, nodding at Hecate, “So if you find the pain’s come back, you just ask her for some more.”

“Thanks,” Addie says, struggling to her feet on a pair of wooden crutches.

“And you keep off that ankle, mind. For at least a week.”

Addie sighs. “Yes, ma’am.”

Geraldine stands as well, and Hecate transfers them all up to the castle, where lunch is being served in the dining hall.

The atmosphere is odd. The Wildwood students are subdued, picking at their sandwiches and staring off into space. At the staff table, the Wildwood teachers are hospitable enough. They engage in polite conversation, asking after the well-being of everyone back at Cackle’s, but Hecate can see their smiles are strained.

Meanwhile, the Cackle’s girls eat ravenously, getting up at intervals to run between conversations at their two assigned tables, and breaking into fits of giggles every few minutes. Miss Drill has to go over twice to warn them about their noise level, nodding over her shoulder at the Wildwood team sat across the hall, a few of whom are glaring coldly in Cackle’s’ direction.

Perhaps to avoid further bloodshed, Miss Tadpole suggests that the Cackle’s girls might like to spend the afternoon out-of-doors, skating on Wildwood’s lake.

**

Hecate sits by the lakeshore on a woollen blanket, watching the girls race around with Miss Drill, who seems to be attempting to instruct them in proper backward-skating technique. Ms. Hubble stands at the edge of the ice, teaching a few of the girls how to play an Ordinary game called ‘red light, green light.’

“Can you do it again, Miss Hardbroom?” Imogen Treewitch asks, trudging unevenly up to Hecate. Her Transformed ice skates seem to be in the process of reverting to school boots. “They keep changing back.”

Sighing, Hecate waves her hand, and the skates right themselves.

“Thanks!” Imogen says, scampering back onto the ice and immediately tackling one of her teammates, who lets out an indignant screech.

Hecate simply does not understand how they still have the energy.

Addie Coppercauldron gives a small laugh, her brown cheeks flushed from the cold. Banned from skating on account of her ankle, she sits beside Hecate on the blanket, her eyes flicking between the antics of her teammates and the pages of a thick book.

A book which, upon closer inspection, Hecate is surprised to be able to identify as the third-year Spell Science text.

Addie catches her staring. “We’ve got Miss Hallow in next week,” she explains, squinting up at Hecate with the winter sun in her eyes. “She asked us questions about the lesson when she audited Chanting, so I want to be sure I know everything. I’ve already read it once,” she adds, a little defensively. “Miss Drill always makes us finish our homework on Friday afternoons, before we leave for a match.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to say to this except “Good,” which she does say, after a moment.

“You don’t normally come with us, Miss Hardbroom,” Addie observes, tucking a few dark twists of hair behind her ear and looking up at Hecate with interest. “Did you like the match?”

‘_Like’_ is not the word Hecate would use—it had been loud, and stressful, and by the end of it she had wondered how it was possible to become so exhausted after only having _watched_ a sporting match. But, she thinks, looking down at Addie’s bandaged foot, that there had been a certain…a certain buoyancy of spirit, she supposes, in watching the girls band together and fight. Even if the fight was for something as absurd as being the best at magicking a ball through a hoop.

“You…did well,” Hecate ventures, and immediately feels foolish. For that was surely an understatement, said to the girl who had willingly sacrificed her ankle for a victory.

But Addie just smiles. “Thanks, Miss Hardbroom. I’m glad you came.”

And Hecate, unused to anyone’s expressing positive feeling—let alone _gladness—_at her presence, feels at a loss for words.

**

After another stilted meal in the Wildwood dining hall, Hecate, Ms. Hubble, and Miss Drill have the unenviable task of settling the girls for the night.

“Imogen, _off_ the table,” Miss Drill calls across the bedlam that is the team’s room. “And Beryl, if I have to ask you one more time about the maglet—_Geraldine!”_

Geraldine Bluebell stills, her hands frozen in the process of pulling the string on a popper. “But it’s _tradition, _Miss Drill.”

Miss Drill, who seems to realize she’s being taken advantage of, wavers for a moment before rolling her eyes. “_Fine._”

The girls let out a whoop and scramble over to Geraldine, who gives them a popper each from a paper sack labelled _Offenhopper’s Witching Poppers. _“There’s enough for you, too,” Geraldine says to the teachers, nodding at them across the room.

“Oh, alright,” Miss Drill says, too cheerily to really be against the idea, and goes over to retrieve hers. Ms. Hubble follows her with a laugh.

Hecate stands stiffly by the door, her arms crossed over her chest.

Geraldine pauses in her efforts to arrange her team into a circle. “There’s still some left,” she calls to Hecate.

Hecate, who has seen far too many Offenhopper’s products delivered to her classroom in the hands of Geraldine Bluebell—most recently, in the form of a firecracker dropped into a barrel of pond slime—widens her eyes in emphatic refusal.

In response, Geraldine shoots her a look of such weary exasperation that Hecate is momentarily taken aback. “Oh, go on, HB, you know you want to.”

The rest of the girls chime in with similar words of encouragement, and even Miss Drill says, “Give it a try, Miss Hardbroom. A bit of fun never hurt anyone.”

Hecate nearly says something snide about how ‘a bit of fun’ had just this morning resulted in a broken nose and a strained ankle.

But she stops when she sees that, for the first time in nearly five months, Ms. Hubble is smiling at her.

Rolling her eyes to hide the beginnings of what was probably a very telling expression on her part, Hecate stalks across the room, reaches her hand into the sack, and, with a certain level of performative officiousness, pulls out a bright purple popper—all while studiously avoiding the eyes of the gathered party.

Someone giggles.

“Right,” Geraldine says. Standing in a circle, everyone raises their poppers. “Three—two—_one!_”

They pull the strings.

With a series of sharp cracks, the poppers burst open, filling the air with showers of sparks. Brightly-coloured streamers swirl like a vivid windstorm over their heads before arranging themselves into the shape of a cat playing with a ball of yarn, into a witch darting around on a broomstick, into a dragon that roars a burst of orange glitter.

Laughing, the girls chase the shapes around the room, scrambling over beds and jumping after the tails of confetti kites. Then, after a few lively minutes, the spells run out and the confetti pops out of existence.

The sparks remain, though, suspended near the ceiling, and when Hecate turns out the lights, they glow like gemstone stars above the girls’ heads.

**

Hecate is so bone-tired by the time they return to their rooms for the night that she feels she could sleep for three days together.

And yet, when the bells in Wildwood’s west tower chime eleven o’clock, she is still lying stiffly on her back in the transformed bed, wide awake.

As the bells fade away, she hears one of the bedroom doors creak open, and then the sound of soft footsteps padding against the flagstones.

It’s Ms. Hubble, walking to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

Hecate lies as still as she can.

Ms. Hubble sets the kettle on to boil and measures tea into a strainer, clearly trying to move as quietly as possible. However, she still manages to make enough noise rifling for a spoon, and then shushing the kettle when it begins to whistle, and then stirring in her milk and sugar, that Hecate wonders that the whole school hasn’t showed up at their door asking what the racket was.

She is too busy glaring in the general direction of the kitchen to remember that she’s meant to have her eyes closed.

“Oh!” Ms. Hubble exclaims, upon turning to see Hecate watching her in the half-dark. She manages not to drop her tea, but it is a close thing. “You startled me,” she says finally, a hand pressed to her chest. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“_Clearly_,” Hecate says, though it is not true.

“I was…only getting a cup of tea.”

Hecate isn’t sure how to respond.

“Well…” Ms. Hubble says, after a moment’s awkward silence. “I’ll just be going…”

Suddenly despairing, Hecate sits up and casts around for something to say. It’s the most they’ve spoken to each other since August and she wants to—wants to keep it, somehow. “Where’s Mildred?” she asks.

And then immediately curses herself. _Where’s Mildred?, _as if she assumes the woman might have forgotten her daughter at home like a spare cauldron?

“She’s staying with Miss Bat and Mister Rowan Webb,” Ms. Hubble answers. “They mirrored me earlier, while the girls were eating dinner.” She bites her lip, looking indecisive, and then continues. “She says hello.”

Hecate blinks. “Oh.”

“I told her I would tell you. She was very insistent.” Ms. Hubble says, smiling sadly to herself. “I think she’s trying to fix it. Bless her.”

Hecate tries to control her breathing.

“Listen, I…” Ms. Hubble takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. For a second, it seems as though she might say something, and Hecate steels herself. But then: “…never mind.”

And again she begins to walk toward her room.

Then she stops, mumbling something to herself that sounds like _if you’re going to do it,_ _just do it. _

She turns back to Hecate, pinning her with troubled eyes. “I’ve gone over and over it in my head. And I still don’t understand.” She sighs. “Well, no. I _understand_. I _understand_ wanting to protect the school. I can even understand how you’d think you’d have to protect it from _me. _But what I don’t understand is why you had to make it seem like…“ She presses her lips together, looking lost.

Hecate grips the edges of the blankets, willing herself to speak. “I…apologise,” she whispers painfully. “I insulted your intelligence.”

Ms. Hubble stares at her, then sets her tea aside on the kitchen table. “Is that what you think?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “That I’m upset because you didn’t think I was a good enough teacher to pass the review?”

Hecate’s stomach twists in confusion. What else was there?

Ms. Hubble crosses her arms and takes a step closer to Hecate, her face half-shadowed in the dark room. “You’d spent the better part of last school year sneering at me across every room we were in together.” She frowns. “You spoke over me at staff meetings, made snide comments at meals about my classes, and one time you told Miss Cackle—directly in front of me—that you weren’t sure why the girls were wasting time learning about Ordinary people when they had real exams to revise for.”

She gives Hecate and odd look. “I’m not angry because you insulted my intelligence. You’d been insulting my intelligence the nearly entire time I’d known you!” She throws her arms into the air, avoiding Hecate’s eyes. “I’m angry because, last summer, while you were apparently spending time with me just so you could have a look at my lesson plans, I…” She pauses, heaving a sigh that seems to take all the life out of her. “…I really thought we’d become friends.”

Hecate feels a terrible sick heat in her throat, dizzy like she’s lost her grip on something essential. She grips the blankets harder, tries to keep herself from floating away.

Ms. Hubble continues. “So, I suppose it’s really me I should be angry at. For letting myself think...” She shakes her head, blinking rapidly. “I just…I still don’t understand _why._ It doesn’t make sense. I would have let you see the lesson plans, if you’d asked. If you’d just _told_ me about the Miss Hallow, I’d have understood. You didn’t need to…to _pretend…_”

There’s a distant ringing in Hecate’s ears.

She knows she must speak—and, equally, knows she is extremely likely to say something that will make everything worse than it already is.

Then, oddly, her mind recalls the image of Geraldine Bluebell, grinning up at a girl twice her size through a mouthful of blood.

Hecate shakes herself.

“That isn’t—” she starts, heart pounding so hard it seems to shake the words. “That’s not what happened,” she manages.

Ms. Hubble shoots her a look, her eyes suspiciously bright. “What do you mean that’s not what happened? I was there. I _asked_ you straight out if that’s what happened and you said, and I quote, ‘_yes.’_”

Hecate’s stomach twists. “It…was.” She takes a deep breath in. “It _was_ the reason. At first. However, it didn’t—it wasn’t the way you think...”

“Wasn’t the way I…?”

“What I mean to say,” Hecate says, willing herself into coherence, “is that I agreed to the exchange out of some genuine interest, and thought of my ability to assist with the lesson plans as a…an added benefit. Of the arrangement.”

“Oh.”

“And I didn’t tell you about the predicament with Miss Hallow because I…” Hecate swallows. “Because I am unaccustomed, I suppose, to sharing…” She twists her mouth. “…concerns. With anyone.” She looks up at Ms. Hubble, and then down again. “It, quite honestly, never occurred to me to tell you.”

“Oh,” Ms. Hubble says again, a bit thickly.

“But,” Hecate hastens to add, “then I also…after a while…I felt, perhaps…” She ducks her head, folding her hands on top of the blankets and then rearranging them twice. “Perhaps…the way you did.”

She hopes she sounds less excruciating than she does in her own head.

Ms. Hubble is quiet. “You felt…” she says, after a while, repeating the words as if she’s trying to comprehend them. “You thought we were friends?”

She says it in such a way—with a hint of accusation—that Hecate is suddenly gripped by the terrible thought that Ms. Hubble had invented her side of the confession in order to catch Hecate out somehow.

But then Ms. Hubble says, “Why didn’t you just_ tell_ me all that? When I’d asked?”

Hecate squeezes her hands together. “Because. Because I wasn’t…” She scowls at herself. “Because I didn’t quite know _how_.”

And she feels, as she says it, how desperately _inadequate_ it is, in the face of all this. She closes her eyes.

But Ms. Hubble is speaking again, much more softly than she has been. “Are you saying,” she asks, “that you accidentally became friends with me, and then didn’t know what to do about it?”

Miserably, Hecate nods.

Ms. Hubble laughs.

Hecate looks up at her, stung.

“Oh, don’t—“ Ms. Hubble says, breaking off into smothered laughter once more before trying again. “Don’t look like that,” she says, a bit of fondness creeping back into her voice that Hecate hadn’t known was missing. “Oh dear.” She wipes at her face, sniffling. “Hecate, it’s just that—_me, too_.”

Hecate blinks at her in confusion.

Ms. Hubble watches her for a long moment, her expression inscrutable. Then she sighs and walks slowly over to the edge of the transformed bed. “Budge up a bit, will you?”

A little stunned, Hecate moves her feet so that Ms. Hubble can sit on the edge of the mattress.

“I proposed the exchange,” Ms. Hubble begins, “because, as I told you, I wanted to talk to someone about the magical world, and to hopefully get a better understanding of where the girls were coming from. To be really frank, it had never crossed my mind to ask you. But then when we got to talking at the museum last year, and I saw how interested you were—almost despite yourself, really—I thought: _well, why not? _And then…well, then I thought, if I can convince _Hecate Hardbroom_ about my classes, about the value of the girls learning to understand the Ordinary world, I can convince anyone.”

She tilts her head to the side, looking across at Hecate. “And then, as it turns out, you were brilliant, and thoughtful, and funny.” She chuckles. “Good lord, are you funny—though sometimes I think you don’t know it. Especially with Mildred. _Oh_, I could watch the two of you argue all day. I think she’s met her match, that one.”

She smiles gently, her brown eyes crinkling at the edges. Hecate’s throat works.

“Do you know,” Ms. Hubble continues, pinning her folded hands between her knees, “I spent most of the last week of July trying to work up the courage to ask you to come by Friday nights instead of mornings, so we could keep up our meetings after school had started again. _Oh, don’t bother, _I thought, _she’ll be too busy. Why would she want to take the time out of her busy day to talk to you._”

Hecate stares at her.

Ms. Hubble sighs. “So, I suppose, when Miss Cackle told us about the review, and about Ursula Hallow, I might have been a little too ready to think you wouldn’t really have wanted me around.”

Hecate’s heart clenches. “I apologise…” she says, her voice gravelly. She knows she should say something more, but doesn’t know how to find the right words.

“Well, so do I,” Ms. Hubble says firmly, looking up at her again. “I should have asked you to clarify things. If anything, I should have taken the time to remember that you’re much too impatient to really spend time on something you don’t like.”

Hecate frowns, unsure if she should be offended.

But Ms. Hubble is just eyeing her with amusement. “So, now, I’ve got a question for you.”

Hecate braces herself.

“What are you doing next Friday evening?”

Hecate blinks. Then realization slowly dawns. “I…believe I have no prior obligations,” she says, a knot in her chest loosening as she does.

Ms. Hubble’s grin is slow and bright. “In that case, it would be our pleasure to have you for dinner. I hope you like lasagne.”

Hecate cannot recall the last time she’d eaten lasagne. She doesn’t think she remembers it well enough to have an opinion on it either way. But she says, “I have no objection.”

“Alright. It’s settled then.”

And, just like that, things _do_ settle. They fall into conversation like slipping back through time.

As they talk, Ms. Hubble shifts backward to sit against the stone wall. Her legs, perpendicular to Hecate’s on the mattress, are clad in loose leggings printed with laughing cherries.

Hecate, who had been too fraught to notice them before, stares at them with casual disdain.

“Oh, leave them alone,” Ms. Hubble complains good-naturedly, when she catches the look on Hecate’s face. “They were a birthday gift from Mo. I quite like them.”

“Of course you do,” Hecate sniffs.

“Hecate Hardbroom, are you insinuating that I have poor taste in clothing?”

“I’m not insinuating.”

“Good.”

“I’m accusing.”

“Oh!” Ms. Hubble laughs. “Really! This coming from the person who owns exactly three dresses—all of them various shades of black!”

Hecate gapes at her like a fish.

Ms. Hubble winces. “Too much? Sorry.”

Hecate closes her mouth, raises her chin. “One of them,” she says, eyeing Ms. Hubble imperiously, “is blue.”

Ms. Hubble stares. Then she bursts out laughing—and, with a wide-eyed glance towards Miss Drill’s door, tries to muffle it in her shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve missed you,” she says, when she’s recovered herself. “I really have.”

Hecate’s cheeks feel warm.

Ms. Hubble is looking at her curiously. “I’ve just realized—I don’t think I was looking at you properly before—but I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair out of that bun before now.”

Hecate ducks her head, her cheeks heating further.

“It’s nice. Really. You should wear it like that more often.”

Hecate clears her throat. “It’s not practical. For potions-making.”

“That,” Ms. Hubble says warmly, “is quite possibly the most _you _thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

She’s smiling at Hecate again, that slow, gentle smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes.

And, though she can’t quite figure out why, Hecate feels oddly like she could cry. Her chest floods with something like relief; it makes her bones feel limp and liquid.

High in the West tower, the bell tolls one.

Hecate jumps. They’ve been talking for nearly two hours.

“I should probably try and get some sleep,” Ms. Hubble says, shuffling herself off the mattress. “Wouldn’t do to fall off the broom tomorrow.”

Hecate nods.

Ms. Hubble sighs pleasantly. “Well—goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Ms. Hubble.”

“You know, you _can_ call me Julie. As I’ve said before,” Ms. Hubble says, lightly, standing in a long curtain of moonlight on the stone floor. “I really wouldn’t mind.”

Hecate isn’t sure she can manage it just then, so she just nods.

Julie nods back, eyes bright and sure, before disappearing down the corridor toward her room.

Hecate settles down into the blankets and, without much effort at all, finally drifts off to sleep.

**

After a frenzied morning of packing, forgetting, and re-packing, the Cackle’s team arrive back to the castle just before noon on Sunday.

The courtyard is crowded with students and staff who burst into cheers as the broomsticks land. Hecate is nearly bowled over by the mob of girls rushing over to congratulate the players. A group of fifth and sixth years lift the team—including Addie and her crutches—onto their shoulders, and the student body parade around the courtyard, yelling _Three cheers for Cackle’s! _

When the parade finally makes its way up the stairs into the entrance hall, Hecate feels as if a great ocean wave has receded. She can see Miss Drill standing over by the assembled staff, receiving a hearty congratulations from Ada.

“Mum!” Mildred, who had been perched on Mister Rowan Webb’s shoulders, scrambles down and runs to her mother.

Julie scoops her up and twirls her around before setting her down on the grass. “Hello, tiny love! Did you have a good time with Miss Bat and Mister Rowan Webb?”

“Yes, really good! We made a ginger pudding last night.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely!”

Mildred spots Hecate over her mother’s shoulder. “Hi, Miss Hardbroom,” she says, with a cautious look at her mother.

But Julie smiles. “Guess who’s coming to dinner Friday?”

Mildred frowns. Then she breaks into a wild grin. “Really?”

Julie laughs, glancing back at Hecate before answering Mildred. “Really.”

“Yes yes yes!” Mildred jumps into the air, her vivid yellow scarf flapping about her shoulders. “It worked! _Finally._”

“Excuse me, little miss, what worked?”

Mildred freezes, caught out. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Julie chuckles and takes one of her daughter’s mitten-clad hands as the staff begin walking back up to the castle.

“So…” Mildred starts, looking between Hecate and her mother, “are you friends again now?”

Julie looks taken aback—and Hecate wonders, with a jolt of uncertainty, whether she’s going to ask Mildred where she ever got _that_ idea.

But then: “Yes,” Julie says, eyeing Hecate with an invitation to some shared amusement, “I believe we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter Seven

Apart from the brief respite provided by the witch ball team’s victory at Wildwood, winter term is a tense spell at Cackle’s. The review committee return from their holidays and start in once more with their duties, poking and prodding at the lives and livelihoods of the Cackle’s residents. Even those teachers who maintained an optimistic view of the reviewers’ intentions seem to grow weary of their presence as the long, grey months draw on.

Mister Bakewell, having finished his student interviews last term, begins conducting the staff competency interviews in late February. Though he takes great pains at dinner to assure everyone that the interviews would be ‘merely perfunctory,’ there is no escaping the fact that the interviews’ results will comprise a major portion of the school’s aggregate score. The staff room is hung with a relentless air of apprehension, everyone ill-tempered and snappish, and Hecate cannot think of a time in her life when she’d liked sharing space with her colleagues less.

**

Hecate’s interview is on the third Friday in March.

The day dawns late and dreary. Hecate has been awake since the early hours, reviewing her notes by candlelight and not quite managing to finish a piece of rye toast. Morgana, affected by her mistress’s mood, paces nervously under the kitchen table.

Five minutes before the appointed time, Hecate snuffs out the candles, tugs wrinkles out of her dress, and transfers to the East wing.

“Enter!” calls Mister Bakewell to her knock.

Hecate does, pausing in the entryway to survey the empty classroom that has served as Mister Bakewell’s headquarters the last six months. The man has apparently transferred in his own furnishings; the sky-blue suede armchairs and gilded china tea set are certainly not of Cackle’s origin.

Hecate takes a seat in the vacant armchair by the hearth. The fire crackling in the grate heats the room to an unpleasant degree. While Mister Bakewell is occupied plumping the cushions in his chair, Hecate casts a quick spell to ensure the floo has been opened correctly.

“Well, Miss Hardbroom,” Mister Bakewell begins chirpily, his cushion-plumping complete, “How pleasant to see you this morning.”

“Hmm,” says Hecate, sitting stiffly. She taps at her timepiece, her hands the faint sort of numb they’d always been before an exam.

“Tea?” Mister Bakewell asks, already pouring a cup and handing it to Hecate.

“I—“

“Biscuit?” Mister Bakewell continues, stirring his own cup with a small golden spoon. “Scone? Sandwich?”

“Not—“

“Eccles cake?” He picks up a plate and holds it out to Hecate. “The students found them quite enticing, if I do say so myself.”

Reminding herself to remain calm, Hecate arranges her face into what she hopes is a polite expression. It takes a moment of work. “Just the tea, if you please,” she says, finally, placing the untouched cup gingerly on the side table after Mister Bakewell hands it over. She clasps her shaking hands in her lap.

Mister Bakewell blinks at her for a moment before dissolving once more into his cheery smile. “Well then! Let’s begin, shall we?”

He takes a sheaf of parchment from his battered attaché case and begins paging through it. “You started here in June 1996, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“As potions mistress?”

“Yes.”

“Form mistress in 2001?”

“Yes.”

“Deputy head 2005?”

“Yes.” Hecate wonders whether the man intended to continue like this for the full quarter of an hour.

Mister Bakewell flips through the later pages of the sheaf, smiling up at her at intervals. “End-of-year exam marks—student progress—Witching Higher Certificate results—letters of support from your colleagues—all satisfactory. Miss Hardbroom, you seem, by this evidence, to be a generally competent educator. Strict. Perhaps set in your ways. Uncompromising, I would say, if the parent complaints are anything to go by—” Mister Bakewell winks at her “—but all in all: yes, generally competent.”

Flustered, Hecate turns away to stare into the fire.

“Which makes the four-year gap all the more confounding.”

Hecate turns back abruptly.

Mister Bakewell, as pleasantly as ever, continues. “You finished at Weirdsister in 1992. I looked into your records there. Top marks, exemplary student, Copernicus Prize winner, Foundation-year paper on the amplifying effects of bat drool published in _The Cauldron._” He waves a dog-eared copy of the journal in question before setting it on the tea table. “And yet: there are four years between the end of your education and the beginning of your tenure at Cackle’s. Would you care to explain, Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate tastes copper on her tongue. The room seems to be heating up by degrees. All of the figures she’d committed to memory—the five-point improvement in her fifth years’ exam scores, the admittance of a number of sixth years to Weirdsister in the potions competency—fly from her mind. All she can see is blank parchment. “I—I hardly see how that is relevant.”

“Oh, me neither,” Mister Bakewell chirps. “But it _might_ be, you see?”

Hecate stiffens. “I do not.”

“Well, that is neither here nor there, as it is _I _who is conducting this interview, Miss Hardbroom.” Mister Bakewell takes a sip of tea, smiling. “Now. Answer the question, please.”

Hecate works her jaw. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, _no, _I would not care to explain,” Hecate says, drawing herself straighter in the chair, even as her voice threatens to shake. A bead of sweat rolls down the nape of her neck, and she struggles not to shiver. “You have the information you need. And more besides, it seems,” she sniffs, darting a glance at the sheaf of parchment in Mister Bakewell’s hands. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have classes to teach.”

Without another word, she rises on stiff legs and walks out of the room.

“Miss Hardbroom—_Miss Hardbroom! _We are not finished—”

The heavy oak door shuts behind her, cutting off Mister Bakewell’s protests.

Hecate leans back against the cool stone wall of the corridor and, in a moment of weakness, lets her eyes fall closed.

_Uncooperative, _she imagines Mister Bakewell noting on his interview report. _Short-tempered. Ill-mannered. Uncompliant._

Breathing unsteadily, she tries to guess how many points she’s lost Cackle’s’ in the review. She tries to guess how many more she would have lost had she answered properly.

This is her fourth quinquennial review. She wonders, in all that time, how she has never been asked that question.

**

“So, how did it go?” Julie asks her, later. They’ve finished dinner and are sitting around the kitchen table drinking cocoa. Mildred has excused herself and is sprawled out on the sofa watching an Ordinary moving picture called _The Aristocats._

Near Julie’s elbow is a copy of the first-year Potions text. Hecate has been attempting to explain the difference between spells that require component potions and potions that require component spells—and then how both of those differ from spells and potions that stand alone. The distinctions are subtle, and require a level of magical theory usually only taught to fifth and sixth years, but Julie seems determined to soldier on.

This is the fourth such meal they’ve had together since reconciling. Hecate is trying not to count.

“Poorly,” Hecate answers frankly.

In the interest of avoiding the misunderstandings of last summer, Hecate has lately been making more of an effort to engage with the questions Julie raises about Hecate’s personal concerns. It is a difficult process—not because she resents the interest (in fact, were she to be truthful with herself, her feelings are the opposite of resentment), but rather because she feels keenly her own awkwardness on the subject. She finds herself clumsy with words, attempting to say either too much or too little, always wishing to _explain_ herself correctly—which often results in a failure to clearly explain much of anything.

If she thinks too much about her responses, she ends up spinning herself into a tangle of doubt about Julie’s intentions in asking, about whether she actually cared to hear the answer. If she doesn’t think, her responses are generally blunt in a way she’s been told makes her sound unfeeling. She has yet to decide which is the better approach. (She only knows that the approach she’d chosen last summer—that is: to avoid these conversations nearly entirely—was not ideal.)

“Really?” Julie asks, her brow wrinkling in concern. “Why?”

Hecate does not wish to explain her fit of nerves, so she says instead: “Bakewell is more than he seems.”

Julie takes a sip of cocoa. “How d’you mean?”

“He…plays the fool. And yet is very much not.” Hecate presses her lips together. “Or, at least, not to the degree he seems to wish others to believe.”

“I suppose I’ll have to keep my guard up next week, then.” Julie’s own competency interview was scheduled for next Tuesday.

“Quite,” Hecate says, taking a sip of her cocoa. It is good—dark, not too sweet. She imagines the kinds of impertinent questions that could be put to the first Ordinary teacher to work in a traditional witching academy. “What did you do, before?” she asks, without meaning to.

“Before?”

Hecate flushes. “That is—I mean, before coming to work here. I realized…I realized I’d never asked.” She feels somewhat ashamed of the fact. And then, on second thought, of the fact that she is asking the same sort of question that had driven her from Bakewell’s interview that morning. “You needn’t answer, of course,” she adds hastily.

Julie gives her a calming look. “It’s alright. I don’t mind. I did…well a lot of things, I suppose. I was an apprentice roof thatcher for a while, you know.” She smiles a little. “That’s how I met Mildred’s father. He was a plumber on a project I worked one spring. And then Millie came along, and I needed something with better hours…I was an assistant at a bookshop until she was four. I used to bring her along with me. She charmed all the customers, of course. She’s always been like that—everybody’s friend, whether she’s known you five minutes or five years.”

She shoots a fond look towards the sofa.

“When she started primary school, I put in to be a dinner lady so I could be home with her in the afternoons.” She shrugs, pressing her lips together. “And then the budgets were cut, and they only had the money for three of us. I was let go.” She looks up at Hecate. “And here we are.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to say. “I would have thought…I suppose I assumed, because in the interview you’d said you’d worked in a school…”

“You assumed I’d been a teacher?” Julie frowns. “I’m sure I told Miss Cackle otherwise…I wouldn’t have misled you intentionally.”

Hecate looks down at her half-drunk cocoa. “I…must admit I may not have been giving you my full attention. I was rather…”

“Against the idea?” Julie suggests, her expression wry.

“Well.” Hecate shifts uncomfortably. “Yes.”

She winces. _Blunt. Too blunt._

Julie laughs. “Hecate, it’s alright. It’s all in the past now, anyway. _Really_,” she adds, at Hecate’s continued discomfort.

“Do you…” Hecate begins, unsure. “Do you…enjoy it?”

“What—teaching?”

Hecate nods.

“You know,” Julie says with a smile, “I really do. I really, really do. I’d thought, a while ago, of going back to school for something. Literature. Engineering. History, maybe. The owner of the bookstore had offered to help me get started with night classes. But things never really worked out. Mildred was so young then, and money was tight…” She looks thoughtful. “I never really thought about a teaching qualification. I’m not sure it ever would have occurred to me.” She takes a sip of cocoa and glances at Hecate over the rim of her mug. “Cackle’s, as you know, was a bit of a last resort. But it’s turned out well for us, I think.”

Hecate follows her gaze over to Mildred, who is giggling at the television screen. In the picture, a group of cats swarm around an Ordinary man in a waistcoat before locking him into a trunk.

“What about you? Do you enjoy teaching?”

Hecate turns back. “Not…not every bit of it.” She hitches her shoulders. “Not this year, particularly, though that is largely a matter of circumstances…” She presses her lips together. “I don’t know if I…if I ever gave thought to anything else. Perhaps apprenticing to an apothecary.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Hecate sets her jaw, her eyes on the tabletop. “There were…expectations.”

Julie says nothing to that, just sips her cocoa. She seems to know when not to press, which is a good part of why Hecate doesn’t mind _trying _so much.

The moving picture ends. Mildred hops up from the sofa, dancing to one of the jazzy songs that had been played by the cartoon cats in the later scenes.

“Alright, Thomas O’Malley,” Julie calls, as Mildred nearly knocks into the mantle during a poorly-executed turn. “Bedtime.”

“But _Mum—” _Mildred protests, stopping her spinning and falling dizzily into one of the armchairs.

“You’ve got to get up early tomorrow to go to the zoo with Jemima. Did you forget?”

“No.”

“I don’t want you falling asleep and then—taking a tumble into the lion’s den, or something, and getting eaten alive.”

Julie says this with good humour, but Hecate wonders if it might not also be a genuine worry, knowing the girl’s penchant for small disasters.

“_Mum,”_ Mildred says, rolling her eyes with a small quirk of her lips, and then getting slowly to her feet anyway.

“Skootch!” Julie waves at her.

Mildred shuffles off toward the bathroom.

“Say goodnight to Miss Hardbroom!” Julie calls after her.

“Goodnight Miss Hardbroom!”

“Goodnight,” Hecate says mildly, though she’s unsure whether the girl could have heard her over the sudden slamming of the bathroom door.

The door opens again. “Sorry, I tripped!”

Hecate opens her mouth to reply, but a second slamming of the door cuts her off.

Blinking, she works her jaw and then shuts her mouth again.

Julie muffles her laughter in the dregs of her cocoa.

**

In late March, just as the weather begins to take a turn for the better, the witch ball team win the match that qualifies them to the Triennial Inter-School Witch Ball Tournament.

As raucous as the celebrations had been after last year’s Wildwood victory, they are nothing compared to the levels of disorderly and downright reckless behavior displayed by Cackle’s’ students over the course of the nine hours between curfew that Sunday evening and dawn the next morning.

Hecate barely sleeps. Instead, she spends the night transferring from one end of the castle to the other, breaking through poorly-cast Silencing spells to discover students engaged in all manner of mischief. She finds a party of first and second years raiding the school pantry for ginger biscuits; a group of fifth years racing their brooms in the vaulted ceilings of the dining hall, red-faced from contraband laughter potions; and an unauthorized gathering of fourth years dancing in an empty room in the North tower, playing “Crocodile Rock” on a Victrola they’d stolen from the Chanting classroom.

By the time Hecate comes across the sixth years mixing witch’s brew in a third-floor storage cupboard, she has vivid pink steam coming out of her ears and is so livid she can’t find her voice.

The night is made even worse by the fact that Almira Hackensack, having apparently caught wind of the plague of rule-breaking, has been transferring in on Hecate’s tail, gauging each scene with her beady eyes and taking notes on a clipboard with a long, greasy crowfeather quill.

“Haven’t you anything better to do?” Hecate finally snaps, after desperately—and, she fears, unsuccessfully—attempting to impress the gravity of the situation upon the sixth-year delinquents, who have since trudged off to bed with the weight of a month’s detention hanging around their necks.

Almira Hackensack raises her eyebrows and adds a few words to her report. “Supervising, Miss Hardbroom. Only supervising,” she says, dotting an ‘I’ with a sort of pernicious glee.

And Hecate, who is not generally prone to violence, has to clench her fists to keep from stuffing Almira Hackensack’s grey knit shawl down her scrawny throat.

**

The following week of classes is not much of an improvement. Though the midnight hooliganism subsides after the first night, the students are restless for days afterward—due, in part, to the snowstorm that has trapped them indoors with no means of burning off any residual post-victory high-spirits.

_No means_, that is, except doing their level best to further damage Cackle’s’ chances of passing the review by behaving like absolute buffoons.

If Hecate didn’t know better—and sometimes she’s not altogether sure she _does _know better—she’d think the girls were intentionally campaigning to have the school closed down.

On that Friday afternoon, Hecate walks through the Potions lab in high dudgeon, vanishing the remains of a disastrous first-year Potions practical from the bottoms of the laboratory cauldrons. She had held some vain hope that this lesson would offer a reprieve from the week’s torment (the first years were generally too overawed of her to try anything directly under her nose). However, whether by accident or design, two of her students had managed to get themselves transformed into woodlice while brewing a simple insect-repellent potion.

And things, as they say, had gone downhill from there.

Hecate had spent most of the class period hastily brewing the potions component of a Tracing spell while simultaneously attempting to calm the hysterics of fifteen first-year girls who were convinced that one wrong step could find them responsible for the squashing-related murder of one or more of their classmates. By the end of the period, three potions had exploded due to lack of attention, and one more had been destroyed when Flora Trellis had accidentally added Tears of a Witch to her cauldron by means of indiscriminate sobbing. The two woodlice had at last been found cowering under an overturned mortar and restored to their original forms, but Hecate only just manages to count that as a victory.

She comes to the last workstation—encrusted with the foul green remnants of a ruined potion—and, in a fit of pique, waves her hands so violently she accidentally manages to vanish not only the potion, but the cauldron, burner, pestle, and cutting board.

She does not set the entire bench on fire in response, but it is a close thing.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate whirls around, eyes wide with residual anger, hands clenched at her sides.

Mildred Hubble takes a step back, frowning warily up at her.

Hecate makes an effort to school her features. “What are you doing here?” She’s not sure she’s managed to filter all of the irritation from her voice. The words come out clipped and tight.

“It’s after classes. Mum said I could come see you. Before dinner?”

She says the last as if wondering if Hecate might have forgotten.

Hecate had not forgotten.

However, she had counted on several hours alone in her quiet rooms after classes before having to be civil for company—a monumental task after this week, even for admittedly _desirable_ company.

“I—“ Hecate clears her throat, takes a calming breath. “This is not a good ti—_do not touch that!_”

Mildred yanks her hand back from the plate of stinging nettles laid out with the other potions ingredients on Hecate’s desk. “What is it?”

“Stinging nettles,” Hecate replies briskly, descending the classroom stairs to the ground level. Moving around Mildred, she begins carefully packing the ingredients back into their original storage containers. Now she’s had the time to adjust to the girl’s unexpected presence, Hecate registers the fact that Mildred has never been into the Potions lab before. She continues: “And if you had to ask that question, you should not have reached for them in the first place.”

“What?”

Hecate points to a sign on the wall near the store cupboard door: a list of laboratory rules. At her gesture, the third line illuminates itself.

And then, on second thought, Hecate waves her hand and the line is read aloud in a cheerful monotone:

  1. _ DO NOT handle unidentified materials (!)_

“How can you identify them if you can’t touch them?” Mildred asks, watching Hecate put the stopper in a glass vial of mayfly wings.

“You use your _eyes,_” Hecate says, exasperated, “and, failing that, protective gloves.”

Mildred is quiet for a moment. She observes as Hecate funnels bat drool back into its storage jar and arranges bundles of heather into a paper-lined box. “Can I help?”

Hecate holds out the box. “Can you identify this material?”

Mildred looks between Hecate and the heather, and then shakes her head. “_No, _but—”

“Then, no, you may not,” Hecate replies primly.

Sighing, Mildred slumps into the chair at Hecate’s desk and begins kicking her feet absently against the chair legs.

The rhythmic thumping noise wears on Hecate’s already frayed nerves.

“If you cannot sit there _silently—”_

“Sorry.” Mildred pulls her feet up onto the chair.

Hecate opens her mouth to protest the abuse of her seat cushion, but decides the better of it. She finishes her task as quickly as possible, then ushers the girl out into the corridor and turns to flick off the classroom lights.

When she turns back around, Almira Hackensack is standing in her way.

“Well, well,” she says, looking between Hecate and Mildred with pinch-faced delight. “The potions mistress…” She grins slowly. “…and the little Ordinary girl.”

Wide-eyed, Mildred backs up into Hecate’s legs.

Miss Hackensack laughs. “Careful my dear,” she croons at Mildred. “Don’t you know Miss Hardbroom likes to chop up little girls like you for spells?”

Bile in her throat, Hecate fumbles to pull Mildred behind her, blocking her from view.

Miss Hackensack meets Hecate’s eyes, her grin widening dangerously.

“It’s the family business, isn’t it?” she says, her voice brimming with private amusement.

Seeing white, Hecate grips Mildred’s hand and transfers them away.

When they rematerialize outside the Hubbles’ door, Hecate hardly registers the change of scenery. Her ears ring.

“Aren’t you going to come in?”

“What?” Hecate whispers, staring unseeing at the wood grain.

“I said, ‘aren’t you going to come in?’” Mildred tugs at Hecate’s hand, which Hecate only then realizes she’s still holding.

She looks down to find Mildred watching her, a puzzled expression on her small face.

Hecate draws herself up straighter, preparing to meet some kind of interrogation.

But Mildred just pushes open the door and tugs Hecate in behind her.

The sudden noise and warmth of the Hubble rooms is startling after the quiet of the corridor.

Julie, who is peeling carrots at the sink and singing to Bon Jovi at the top of her lungs, turns around at the sound of the door closing again.

“You’re early!” she calls over the music, smiling.

Shuffling awkwardly, Hecate eyes the door.

“No—it’s alright,” Julie says, prodding at her telephone in a way that makes the music softer. “The food isn’t ready yet, though. Would you like some tea?”

Hecate finds herself being pulled towards an armchair by Mildred, who tells her mother, “Miss Hackensack was being creepy, so we came back here.”

Julie rinses her hands, reaches toward a shelf for a teacup. “She was, was she?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at Hecate. “That old goat has no business in a school, if you ask me. Sugar?”

Hecate shakes her head. Crossing the room, Julie hands her a cup of black tea over the side table and fixes her with an appraising look.

Mildred is already chattering on about something that had happened at school—something about an experiment involving flowers and food dye.

“Mildred,” Julie interrupts, without taking her eyes off Hecate, “why don’t we let Miss Hardbroom relax? You can help me with the carrots, if you like.”

With some reluctance, Mildred acquiesces.

It is as if, upon finally sitting down, the whole week catches up with Hecate at once. Her eyelids droop, and she finds herself drifting, catching bits of conversation from the kitchen and strains of music playing from the telephone—until she’s startled into full consciousness again by the shrill ring of a kitchen timer.

At dinner she barely registers the food in her mouth and, despite several attempts from both Mildred and Julie to involve her in conversation and her own vague thoughts telling her to _engage, engage before your silence drives the pair of them away_, she is unable to contribute much beyond single syllables.

Afterwards, Hecate is ushered back over to the armchair while Julie and Mildred clear the dishes from the table.

The last thing Hecate remembers is a hushed discussion in the kitchen about taking care when drying glasses.

**

She opens her eyes hours later and finds Julie watching her from the sofa.

“Hello, there,” Julie says softly, her eyes crinkling in a slow smile.

Hecate blinks and pushes herself upright. The lights are dim; there is no sign of Mildred.

“We thought of waking you for pudding, but it seemed like you needed sleep more than ice cream. Heretical as it is to say.”

Hecate struggles to get her bearings.

“It’s just gone nine,” Julie says. “Mildred’s gone to bed. But she wanted you to have this.”

She hands Hecate a carnation…an unnaturally _purple_ carnation.

Hecate takes it with careful fingers. The phrase _DO NOT handle unidentified materials_ rings oddly through her sleep-addled mind.

“She dyed it in school today. She said it reminded her of you.”

Hecate studies the flower, her eyes misting unexpectedly. She blinks.

“Hecate…is everything alright?”

Hecate looks up to meet Julie’s concerned eyes.

“If your week’s been anything like mine—“ Julie’s saying. “Oh, were they little terrors! I thought I’d go bald pulling my hair out.” She chuckles, then grows serious again. “But…?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Hecate says, the briskness she’s aiming for undercut by the creak of fatigue in her voice. To cover it, she stands and walks over to the large window.

Outside, in the thick violet night, snow is falling again, adding to the drifting banks that blanket the castle grounds.

She’s been up every night this week, worrying that every small (and significant) infraction might spell the end of the school.

She’s been up every night this week, wondering what Mister Bakewell could possibly have meant by questioning her past.

And now, Almira Hackensack _dares _insinuate…

Everything is not alright.

“Hecate.”

Hecate starts.

Julie is standing a few feet away, looking at Hecate’s hands, which are clenched so tight around her crossed arms that her knuckles are visibly whitened, even in the dim light of the single stand lamp near the sofa. “You’re crushing the flower,” she says gently.

Hecate unwraps her arms and gingerly takes the flower from the crook of her elbow, where she had been gripping it under her fingers. The stem is perhaps a little worse for wear, but it looks recoverable.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I…” Hecate sighs. “I despise not knowing.”

“Not knowing what?”

“As a general state of being. Not knowing.” She closes her eyes. “But, in this particular instance, not knowing the results of the review…Not knowing the fate of the school…Not knowing my own fate as connected with that of the school’s.”

Julie walks quietly up next to her and, giving Hecate enough time to move away had she wanted, slowly reaches out to put her hand on Hecate’s forearm.

The sensation is so foreign it stalls Hecate’s mind for a moment. She thinks she can feel Julie’s bones against her own, pressing through the fabric of her sleeve.

“Ada doesn’t believe me,” Hecate says, without meaning to say it. She stiffens.

“How do you mean?”

Hecate closes her eyes, shakes her head. “I…something does not sit well about the reviewers.” Hecate swallows. “Ada says we should give them the benefit of the doubt, but I—“ She shakes her head again, taking in a deep breath. “I truly feel something may be wrong.”

“You know,” Julie says, “They’ve given me a strange feeling ever since they arrived. I could certainly live without that Hackensack woman breathing down my neck, and you were right about Bakewell. Did I tell you? He started asking me about my family in the interview. And I don’t mean _How’s your mother? _ He doesn’t _know _my mother. But their jobs, where they were born, that sort of thing. I said to him, _What does this have to do with my teaching? _And he just smiles at me. _That is for me to ask and you to answer, Ms. Hubble._” Julie scoffs. “Creepy old bugger.”

Hecate presses her lips together, caught between relief at having been believed and distress at having her fears seconded. Unfortunately, neither clarified the situation.

“I used to tell Mildred,” Julie says after a moment, “’we do what we can with what we have, and there’s nothing else for it.’ And one day she gives me a _look_—you know the one—and she says ‘I _know_ Mum. That’s the problem.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the author's note at the end of the chapter.

In April, a drawing is held to determine which finalist school will host the Triennial Inter-School Witch Ball Tournament.

And of course—of course—it is Cackle’s’ name drawn out of the cauldron.

Hecate begins to wonder if she’d broken a mirror somewhere and forgotten.

**

After a month of frenzied preparation, the day of the tournament arrives.

Outside in the bright May sunshine, the main courtyard of the castle bustles with activity. Landing zones have been set up on the grass, marked out with velvet ropes and hand-painted signs made by the school decorating committee. The spaces in between are a sea of student robes—children darting this way and that, broomsticks in hand; harassed teachers taking registers and blowing silver whistles. In one corner, near the south entrance, Cackle’s invisible brass quartet play a rather poor rendition of “76 Trombones”. A small band of press roam the crowd, cameras flashing.

Ada and Miss Drill meet the new arrivals in the square, where some of the Cackle’s girls pretend to busy themselves with cat training or broomstick maintenance in order to catch a first glimpse of the rival players.

Hecate stands just inside the entrance hall, marking off the teams as they arrive and directing them toward a table near the fireplace, where Julie and Miss Bat give out lodging assignments. At the end of the table, Mister Bakewell hands each visitor a parcel containing clean linens, small bottles of hair potion, and, inexplicably, a freshly-baked Eccles cake.

A number of the older Cackle’s girls have been assigned as guides for the visiting players and spectators, showing them to their rooms and escorting them around the castle. Hecate watches out for any nastiness, but the girls seem to treat their guests cordially, and to answer questions enthusiastically, and Hecate can’t help but feel a twinge of pride.

Dinner that evening is a grand affair. Mister Rowan Webb’s brother, Angus, has been hired on to assist Miss Tapioca in the kitchens—though it seems, judging by the quality of the food, that he had somehow found a way to keep Miss Tapioca out of the kitchens altogether. There is roast chicken and fondant potatoes and summer vegetables and crusty bread and rich herbed butter—and, for dessert, walnut cake and blueberry galette and lemon tarts.

“Can we keep him forever?” Miss Drill sighs, leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed after finishing a last forkful of cake.

“Afraid he’s already spoken for,” Mister Rowan Webb says with a smile from the end of the table.

“Well, we should speak louder. I haven’t had food like this in—I don’t know. Since Miss Tapioca had the Gryffin Pox years ago, I suppose. Remember? We had to fly into the village and buy…what was it?”

“Pizza,” Miss Mayweather says.

“Right, _pizza,_” Miss Drill says dreamily.

Mildred, her mouth stained purple with galette, giggles.

**

Saturday is taken up with the preliminary matches: Amulet’s against Wildwood and Cackle’s against Doomstone’s.

It is a nervy affair—and one from which Hecate is pleased to maintain her distance. She’s been stationed once more in the entrance hall, tasked with coordinating the movements of the various groups on and off the field, directing the assembled press, and diffusing various inter-school tensions. The roar of the crowd drifts up at odd intervals through the open windows, carried by the sweet spring breeze; Miss Tapioca brings Hecate a mid-day meal of boiled chicken and complains she’s expecting an invading army to come pounding at the castle gates any minute, what with all this bedevilled caterwauling. (Hecate later spots her leaning out of the kitchen window during the Cackle’s/Doomstone’s match, shouting herself hoarse). 

By the end of the day, the players in the final match are decided: Cackle’s will face Wildwood for the Triennial Inter-School Witch Ball trophy. The prospect of this rematch has even the teachers whispering eagerly to each other over dinner, and Hecate fully expects to be kept awake that night by more of the same victory-induced revelry that has plagued her all winter term. Instead, the castle is eerily quiet, strung through with a palpable air of nervous anticipation.

The day of the final dawns bright and unseasonably warm, the last of the early-morning fog burning away as the crowds gather out in the fields behind the castle, where a specially-transformed stadium rises above the treeline of the forest beyond.

The wooden stands fill with throngs of brightly-dressed spectators: parents and teachers and students and players from the eliminated teams. The press assemble on the sideline, reams of parchment hovering by their elbows, cameras reflecting flashes of sunshine up into the stands. At a stall near the stadium gates, Cackle’s’ Cauldron Club sell potions that will dye the purchaser’s hair a select array of school colours. Members of Cackle’s’ parent-teacher organization roam the aisles in striped aprons, giving out paper cones of cauldron corn.

Above the hum of the gathering crowd, the crow calls nine, amplified by a spell in the castle’s North tower.

The Cackle’s staff have been assigned patrols throughout the stadium. From the tallest row of the Southeast stands, Hecate surveys the field with sharp eyes, looking out for trouble.

Thus far, the worst she’s dealt with has been a knot of toads that had found their way—with Amulet’s students’ help—into Wildwood spectators’ cauldron corn. (Thankfully, no permanent damage seems to have been done— though Hecate has noticed a few of the Amulet’s perpetrators sending baleful looks in her direction following her confiscation of their Amphibious Apparition potion.)

By nine-fifteen, the stands are nearly full to bursting. Down near the sideline, Hecate spots the finalist teams beginning to gather for the opening ceremonies.

The Cackle’s team seems in its usual cheerful disarray. Miss Drill and Miss Mayweather attempt to arrange the girls in height order, but a number of them have become distracted by waving to parents and friends in the stands. Geraldine Bluebell is carrying Addie Coppercauldron on her back and running back and forth in front of the Cackle’s student crowd, shouting something indiscernible while Addie waves a school banner over their heads.

Hecate is about to transfer down to put a stop to the nonsense when Miss Drill, whistle between her teeth, finally manages to instil order in her team.

At precisely nine-thirty, a fanfare sounds. The teams march out onto the field to deafening cheers. Cameras flash like fireworks across the stands. Cackle’s’ school choir, the Belting Banshees, sing the school song standing on apple crates at centrefield. (Hecate has to put Silencing spells over the booing Wildwood girls in her stands).

When the song is over, Ada walks out onto the field to polite applause—and some raucous cheering Hecate suspects is the doing of the Cackle’s fourth years.

“Welcome! Welcome!” Ada says, her voice amplified by a megaphone borrowed from the rules-witch. “Well! What a pleasure it is to welcome you all to the 38th Triennial Interschool Witch Ball Tournament!”

The crowd roars.

“Yes, yes! Wonderful! I am sure we are all in for a treat today, with such talent gracing the field—on both sides!”

Hecate sets another Silencing spell, this time over a number of jeering Amulet’s students.

“So, without further ado, I will pass the torch to Miss Francine Troutwine, our rules-witch for the tournament! Good luck to all!”

Ada puts down the megaphone and turns to shake hands with the rules-witch, who has marched out to centrefield.

“Teams! Take your positions!” shouts the rules-witch, her scarlet robes billowing in the morning breeze.

Faces set with determination, the girls assemble on the field. The Wildwood student spectators begin a chant:

_Win, win, Wildwood! Win, win, Wildwood!_

The rules-witch bends her head low in a brief discussion with the team captains. Then, placing her whistle between her lips, she raises the ball aloft.

Silence falls over the stadium.

The school flags planted at either end of the field flap noisily in the wind, their colours catching in the sunlight.

Despite herself, Hecate feels a thrill of anticipation.

The whistle sounds.

And, in an explosion of movement and sound, the match begins.

**

The first half is a bloodbath.

Apparently eager to get their own back following Cackle’s’ victory earlier in the term, the Wildwood girls play like starving dragons. Within the first fifteen minutes, three Cackle’s girls are sent off the field to the first aid tent. Two of them have to be carried.

(When, in retribution, Geraldine Bluebell elbows Wildwood’s number sixteen so hard she doubles over on the grass, Hecate has to remind herself not to delight in others’ suffering.)

By the time the whistle blows for halftime, Hecate has clenched her jaw so firmly she’s given herself a headache. She watches as Belinda Boxwood sprints toward the first aid tent, leaving the rest of her team trudging dispiritedly toward the sidelines. Belinda’s twin sister, Beryl, had been among those carried away early in the match.

Hecate is debating the merits of transferring down to determine the state of things with the injured girls when she feels a tap on her shoulder.

Startled, she whirls around—and there is Mister Bakewell.

“Miss Hardbroom,” he greets pleasantly, “Enjoying the match?”

Hecate opens her mouth to reply in the negative.

“A word, if you please,” Mister Bakewell interjects.

Hecate frowns.

“It won’t be a minute.” Mister Bakewell smiles.

Hecate casts a glance over her shoulder. Her area of the stands seems in order. Down on the field, Cackle’s’ broomstick display squad are assembling at centrefield for their halftime performance.

“It’s about the little Hubble girl,” Mister Bakewell says.

Hecate turns back around. “What about her?” she demands.

“Oh, not to worry,” Mister Bakewell demurs, patting Hecate on the arm. “She can’t seem to find her mother, is all. She wondered if you might help locate her.”

Hecate wrenches her arm away. “Take me to her.”

Mister Bakewell smiles again. “As you wish.”

He transfers them away.

They reappear in the dim space under the stands. Hecate darts a glance around, but doesn’t spot Mildred anywhere. At her bewildered look, Mister Bakewell’s lips twitch in vague amusement.

The hair rises at the back of Hecate’s neck.

A voice from the shadows makes her jump.

“It’s about time.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Mister Bakewell tuts. “Patience, Hubert.”

“That’s all very well for you to say.” A man—tall, coiffed, wearing a paisley silk waistcoat—steps out from behind a wooden strut, eyeing Hecate coldly.

“What is the meaning of this?” Hecate demands, her heart beginning to pound. “Where is Mildred? What have you—“

Her voice dies in her throat, stolen by a spell. Scarlet ropes unfurl from the air, binding her hands and feet so she can’t move.

Her stomach lurches. Panic darkens the edges of her vision. She twists her wrists in an attempt to transfer—and finds she cannot.

The waistcoated man lowers his staff. “There,” he says, a look of prim satisfaction on his face. He turns to Mister Bakewell. “You had best get out of here. Ursula will signal when it’s time.”

With a mock salute, Mister Bakewell turns on his heel and disappears.

The waistcoated man peers at Hecate. “And now, Miss Hardbroom. Time to make yourself useful.”

Hecate struggles against her bindings, desperately spinning counterspells in the wild tumbling of her mind.

The man raises his staff once more.

The world goes dark.

**

_Hecate._

_Hecate._

“—Hecate!”

Hecate wakes to the sounds of screams.

She blinks her eyes open. A sick, sharp pain lances through her head.

“Hecate!”

It’s Julie, leaning over her with a look of desperate worry on her face.

Behind her, the waistcoated man is sprawled unconscious in the dirt under the stands, bleeding from a cut over his eye.

Gasping, Hecate sits up.

Her vision greys. She has to bite her cheek against the bile creeping up her throat.

Screams echo all around them, above them. Hecate cannot place their source. She brings a hand to her spinning head.

Fingers grip at her elbow.

Julie.

_Julie._

Hecate starts. “Mildred,” she whispers urgently, her words barely audible over the screams. “Where’s Mildred? They said—“

“She’s right here, she’s fine. She’s fine.”

Hecate opens her eyes, not having realized she’d closed them.

With some effort, she looks over Julie’s shoulder and finds Mildred hovering behind a wooden support beam, pale and dishevelled and clearly terrified.

A wave of relief washes over Hecate. It is short-lived.

Somewhere unseen, the screams intensify.

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred asks, darting a frightened look over their heads.

“It’s alright, love,” Julie says hastily, though the drawn look on her face says otherwise.

“What’s happened?” Hecate demands, fighting to clear the fog from her mind. She makes to stand, only managing it when Julie hooks an arm around her waist.

Once upright, Hecate aims a bleary Binding spell at the still-unconscious waistcoated man and feels a vague flash of vindictive glee when the impact sends a noticeable shudder through his body.

They begin walking as quickly as possible in the direction of the light, the screams sounding closer and closer. Mildred is deadly silent at Julie’s other side.

“They did something,” Julie says, and Hecate can hear the thrum of fear in her voice. “I don’t know what. But the girls are—“

They round the edge of the stands, the playing field opening up before them.

Hecate stops short.

The stadium is in total chaos—people screaming, children crying, white-faced teachers attempting to collect their students, the crowd jostling each other as they spill down from the stands and rush toward the exit.

At first, Hecate cannot see what has caused the panic.

Then she looks up.

The girls from the Cackle’s display squad are flying in a tight v-formation, circling above the stadium at breakneck speed.

And then, as if directed by a sudden wind, they plummet toward the stands, slamming into the screaming crowd.

Unthinking, Hecate throws a desperate Freezing spell in their direction.

It bounces off a Shield with a cheery shimmer.

“Nothing’s working!” someone shouts. “_Nothing’s working!_”

“They’re going to kill somebody!”

All around them on the muddied field, panicked spectators shove past, tripping over abandoned schoolbags and cones of cauldron corn. Those still in the stands begin climbing over each other to reach the stairs. Duels break out in the aisles. Near the stadium entrance, Miss Cackle and Mister Rowan Webb climb onto the Cauldron Club’s booth with the golden megaphone, attempting to instil order before someone gets trampled.

In the midst of the pandemonium, a ragged group of Cackle’s teachers gathers at centrefield, aiming spell after spell at the display squad to no effect.

The squad circle the stadium once more, moving so quickly their shapes almost blur into one. Hecate can hear their screams over all the rest: a single, waxing note of terror that chills her bones.

Despairing, Hecate closes her eyes. Someone pushes by, jostling her shoulder. Her hands shake. She twists her wrist, transforming an empty paper cone on the ground into a tandem broomstick. The action worsens the spinning of her head; she clenches her hands against it.

She struggles out of Julie’s grip and mounts the broom.

“Hecate—Hecate, _wait!_” Julie calls after her.

But Hecate is already in the air, rising to the level of the school banners now flapping frantically in the wind.

Over her left shoulder, the squad rounds another corner, heading straight for her.

Gripping her broom handle, Hecate matches their speed and catches them as they pass. She hastily mutters the spell to bring the closest broom Alongside hers.

Nothing happens.

The lead flier, a fifth year called Penny Newt, spots Hecate out of the corner of her eye.

“No!” she screams, eyes streaming. “Stop! _Please, _Miss Hardbroom! _Please stop it!_”

The wind buffeting her from all sides, Hecate waves her hand in an attempt at a dangerous transfer—but Penny remains on her broom.

Eyeing the distance between herself and the girl, Hecate steels herself.

Then she reaches out her hand to pull the girl from her broom.

“You leave her alone!” Olive Ingleside shouts from her position on Penny’s left wing. Tears mingle with blood on her face, her dark hair whipping across her cheeks. “_Leave her alone_!”

Ignoring her, Hecate edges closer to Penny.

She’s not attempted a manoeuvre like this in over thirty years. Her hands shake violently.

Penny screams louder, shying away.

“Calm yourself, you silly girl, unless you wish to fall to your death!” Hecate shouts.

Penny’s scream dissolves into helpless sobbing.

Hecate reaches again for the girl. After a moment’s terrifying fumbling, she manages to pull Penny onto the broom in front of her.

Heart in her throat, Hecate clutches the girl and angles her broomstick toward the ground.

When she dismounts near centrefield they are immediately swarmed by Cackle’s staff.

“Miss Hardbroom, what in _Hades—” _Miss Bat cries. Behind her, Misses Gossamer, Drill, and Mayweather share a decisive look before transforming brooms for themselves and taking off in pursuit of the remaining display squad.

“I keep trying to tell you, _it wasn’t her!” _Julie shouts, one arm holding Mildred against her as the frenzied crowd shoves past.

“What—what wasn’t?” Hecate asks breathlessly. She hands a shell-shocked Penny off to Miss Thistlereed, the school nurse.

Miss Bat shoots her an icy glare. Julie looks reluctant to say.

Miss Drill lands with Olive just as the squad—and four empty brooms—dive once more toward the people still trapped in the stands.

“No!” Miss Bat yells, shooting a tearful Freezing spell in their direction. Once more, it bounces off a Shield.

“It’s useless!” Hecate shouts over the screams, bits of loose hair pulled from her bun by the wind. Her eyes follow the girls across the sky, looking for her next opening. “Whatever spell is shielding them blocks all magical interference. We’ve got to get them down without magic!”

“Yes, and you would know, wouldn’t you!” Miss Bat shrieks, before striding away towards Miss Gossamer, who has nearly crashed her broom attempting to land with two girls on behind her.

“_What_?” Hecate gasps. She finds Julie’s eyes.

Julie sighs, shaking her head. “Hecate, the person who set the curse on the girls’ brooms,” she says, hesitantly, over the noise of the crowd. “Well…well it looked like you.”

Hecate’s stomach drops. The squad pass overhead, flying even faster than before. She grips her broom absently. “That’s—that’s _impossible. _I—”

Julie bites her lip. “No, I know. I know that. Listen—“

“_No_.”

Hecate mounts her broom and shoots off once more toward the squad, ignoring the violent swimming of her head.

She catches them up just as Miss Mayweather is attempting to pull the last two girls—Tara Ronan and Audrey Moon—onto her broom.

Miss Mayweather manages Tara well enough. The girl turns around to offer encouragement to her young teammate.

“Go on, Audrey!” she calls. “Take my hand!”

White-lipped and trembling, Audrey reaches for Tara’s hand. She misses, twice.

Hecate’s heart is in her throat. Her eyes catch on the silver charm bracelet around Audrey’s little-girl wrist; on the chipped blue nail varnish on Tara’s small, freckled fingers.

Last week, she’d shouted at Tara for bringing a tube of shimmery pink lip-gloss to Potions class; there were little pink splotches on the worktable where she’d spilled it, and Hecate had kept her back after the lesson and called her ‘frivolous’ and a ‘time-waster’…

A sudden gust of wind knocks the breath from her chest.

The girls shriek in terror.

“Steady now!” Miss Mayweather yells. “Try again!”

Crying silently, Audrey reaches out with trembling fingers and grasps Tara's arm. Then, just as she begins to lean across the distance between Miss Mayweather's broom and her own, her cape snags on the tail bristles of her broomstick.

Sensing disaster, Hecate darts forward to free the cape. Audrey spots her and flinches away--

and, in doing so, loses her grip on Tara’s arm,

fumbles at thin air,

and plummets toward the ground.

“Audrey!” Tara screams.

Ears ringing, Hecate drops her broom into a steep dive, flinging Freezing spell after Freezing spell out in front of her—but none of them land.

Her eyes water with the speed of the broom, her outstretched hand grasping at nothing.

The field rushes up toward them in a dizzying blur of colour.

And then, a mere twenty feet above the ground, her hand catches onto Audrey’s forearm.

Everything stops.

For a few odd seconds, they hang there in the air, Hecate leaning down across her broom, Audrey dangling below it.

There is a roaring noise in Hecate’s ears.

It takes her a moment to realize it’s coming from the crowd below.

They’re cheering.

“Don’t let go,” Audrey whispers desperately, as Hecate begins to lower them both to the ground. “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” Hecate promises.

They touch down on the field to a wave of applause. The crowd, now released from its panic, presses in on them from all sides.

“Did you see—“

“But I thought—“

“Are you alright?”

“Where’s the first aid witch?”

“Somebody fetch the nurse!”

“Hecate!”

The world goes dark once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mild peril, non-graphic violence
> 
> Thanks for reading! (Sorry about the cliffhanger!)


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end of chapter for content warnings.

Night has fallen when Hecate wakes again.

She blinks against the dimness of the room, trying to place her surroundings.

Things come slowly into focus. There’s a small table laden with vases of flowers. A clock ticks steadily on the wall above. A striped orange curtain hangs down from a wooden rod. Soft lamplight spills out from under a door marked _Office._

She is in the school infirmary.

There’s a small noise to her left.

Head pounding, Hecate struggles to sit up, pushing herself back against the mountain of pillows piled between her and the wrought-iron bedframe.

At last, she manages it; the movement exhausts her more than it should.

Her eyes fall upon the source of the noise. A few feet from her bedside, Julie and Mildred sit curled up in an infirmary armchair, asleep.

Hecate breathes, breathes, doesn’t know quite what to make of it.

She’s still trying to gather her sluggish thoughts when Julie’s eyes open.

“Hi there,” Julie whispers, a small smile curling the edges of her mouth. She presses her cheek against the top of Mildred’s head. The girl tightens her grip on her mother’s cardigan, but doesn’t wake. “How’s the head?” She gives Hecate a long look. “It did quite a number on you, that spell. You’ve been out for—” she glances at the clock on the wall “—nearly twelve hours, now. We didn’t know if you’d come ‘round today. Miss Thistlereed said it might be as long as a week.”

Hecate opens her mouth, and then closes it again.

The day starts to come back to her in pieces, bringing with it a rising sense of alarm. The Hubbles, she can see, are safe at least, but—

“The girls?” she asks, her voice croaky from disuse.

Julie shakes her head. “All fine. Bumps and bruises, for the most part, and a few broken bones, but they’ve all been healed.” She nods toward the curtain. “Audrey and Olive are here as well, but the rest have been cleared to transfer home with their parents.”

Hecate’s thoughts spin. Outside, above the dark of Hollow Wood, a shadow crosses the moon.

Her eyes close against the pounding in her head. She blinks blearily down at her lap. Her dress has been removed; she’s been put into the infirmary standard striped blue pyjamas. The sleeves come past her wrists. Her timepiece still hangs around her neck; she reaches for it absently.

“What happened?” she whispers, not entirely certain she wants to know.

Julie sighs. “We’re still trying to understand it all. But I can tell you what I know, if you’re up to it.”

“Do.”

“Right.” Julie shifts a little in the chair. Mildred mumbles something in her sleep. “So you were right about the reviewers: they were up to something.” Her expression darkens. “It was them behind it all—”

“How?” Hecate demands, suddenly furious. She’d known it. She’d _known_. If only she’d done something. If only—

Julie gives her a quelling look. “I’m getting to that. Keep your hair on.”

Hecate widens her eyes indignantly.

It makes her head ache. A buzz of nausea starts in her belly.

“That man—“ Julie begins. “The one who attacked you under the stands—turns out his name is Hubert Hallow. Better known as Ursula Hallow’s husband.”

Hecate frowns. She’d thought perhaps his face had looked familiar.

“I wasn’t there, but apparently he hit you with some sort of projection spell. It knocked you unconscious and created a projection of your body that he could control.” Julie pauses, seeming to steel herself. “You—the lookalike you—walked straight out onto the field when the girls were doing their broomstick display and cursed them, in front of the whole crowd.” She shakes her head. “Dimity said once they realized what sort of spell you were casting, they tried to go out and stop you. But as soon as they tried, they _couldn’t_. She said it was like they were all in a trance—nobody could think. Nobody could remember what they’d been trying to do.” Julie presses her lips together. “And by the time they all snapped out of it, the girls’ brooms were already—well, you saw. The staff tried all sorts of spells to stop it, but the Shield was too strong, and there was an Anti-Transferrence spell up, so they couldn’t get the girls down from the brooms. And nobody could get out, except through the gates, and they’d been locked with a spell.”

Hecate’s mind sticks on one point. “What do you mean ‘you weren’t there’?”

Julie grimaces. “Hackensack locked Mildred and me in the southwest tower before the match.”

“_What_?”

“After breakfast, she told me she wanted a word with me about the review. I thought it was strange she wanted to meet all the way up there, but I went along. Stupid, I know…” She sighs. “Well. Anyway, as soon as we stepped inside the tower room, I turned around and saw her shutting the door on us.”

“But…” Hecate blinks. “How did you get out?”

Julie grins. “You witches forget we Ordinary folk can do well enough on our own, without magic.”

Hecate raises her eyebrows.

“Hairpins,” Julie says, her eyes twinkling. “Champion lock-picker, me. Knocked Hackensack broadside with the door as we ran out.”

Hecate fights to keep her expression neutral.

“By the time we got down to the stadium everything was already kicking off. The whole place had gone mad, and the entrance was blocked, so we went around back. Mildred saw this odd sort of glow coming from under the stands as we were walking—and there you were, in a daze, and that Hallow fellow was stood over you with his staff.”

Hecate tangles her fingers in the chain of her timepiece. Her heart races under her skin, the force of it shaking her hands.

“So I snuck up behind him and knocked his head into one of the supports. The glow went away, and you just sort of toppled over.” Julie bites her lip. “Dimity says you—the lookalike you—poofed away into thin air, right off the middle of the playing field. At the time, they thought you had transferred off somehow, but now they think that must have been the projection spell ending when I knocked Mister Hallow out.”

Hecate’s chest aches. She swallows. “So they…they know it wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t you?” Julie finishes softly.

Hecate nods once, avoiding Julie’s eyes.

“Yes. They do now, anyway. Miss Thistlereed did all sorts of scans—I don’t know what you call them—but she confirmed you had that projection spell cast on you, and that it wasn’t your magic that cursed the girls’ brooms. We’re fairly certain the reviewers were planning to take you with them afterwards, or I can’t see how they thought they could have gotten away with it all, if you can tell all that just from a scan.”

“And did they? Get away?” Hecate asks, afraid of the answer.

Julie shakes her head, smiling a little. Her curls brush across Mildred's forehead. “No. Your Binding spell was still on Mister Hallow when they found him under the stands. Mister Bakewell was caught chanting the Anti-Transferrence spell from inside the broomshed.” She chuckles. “And little Addie Coppercauldron, of all people, tackled Miss Hackensack in the hall as she was trying to escape. Gave her a second lump on the head.”

“Ursula Hallow?”

“She flew off, but your witch police—whatever you call them—caught up to her over the English Channel.” Julie makes a face. “She’s still trying to insist she had nothing to do with it. But even her husband’s turned on her.”

Hecate’s brow furrows. She can’t seem to think straight. “What, precisely, were they hoping to accomplish with all this? Surely—if it were just a matter of taking over the school, they could just have written a poor review and been done with it.”

“We were talking to some of the Council investigators…” Julie hesitates. “A poor review only goes so far, you know. Five years’ probation. Another review. Maybe Ada would have been removed. But maybe not. And she—Miss Hallow—didn’t want anyone getting suspicious. The plan was to do the review by the book, and then…” Julie trails off.

“And then—what?” Hecate asks, bracing herself.

Julie gives her a long, careful look. She shakes her head. “They were trying to discredit Miss Cackle by making it seem like she’d hired some kind of criminal fanatic as her deputy—like you’d been planning all this right under her nose, and she hadn’t noticed.” Her mouth twists. “That way, they’d destabilize Miss Cackle’s reputation, remove both her and her next-in-command, and the line of succession would be open. There aren’t any other women in her family who could take over—I guess all of her mum’s siblings were brothers. But you’d know more about all that than me…” She trails off.

Hecate’s jaw clenches painfully.

Julie sighs. “They’d been playing nice all year so when the Magic Council had to replace Miss Cackle, Miss Hallow would be right there, all sensible and well-liked by everyone.”

Hecate bites her lip.

“She bullied her husband into it, too,” Julie says. “His family are all broomstick mechanics, you know, so he wrote the curse for the girls’ brooms. And they needed him to cast the projection spell on you, after Mister Bakewell botched his part.” Julie rolls her eyes. “Apparently Bakewell was supposed to charm you into joining up with them—and, failing that, to blackmail you into casting the curse. I don’t know why they imagined that would work, even if you _had _been... Well. Anyway, he was useless at it, obviously. The old toad. He was in it for the job at the Magic Council—Miss Hallow promised he could replace her when she left to run Cackle’s.” Julie shrugs. “And Almira Hackensack is just evil, I suppose. Never did get a coherent response out of her.”

Silence falls.

Hecate tries and fails to get her mind around the whole thing. Her heart beats painfully in her chest, the dull throb of it echoing in her aching head. Her fingers go numb from being twisted so tightly in the chain of the timepiece.

“Oh! I forgot,” Julie says suddenly, her eyes twinkling. “You’ll like this bit, I think. We were trying all afternoon to come up with an explanation for the way everyone temporarily lost all sense while the lookalike you was cursing the brooms. Miss Mayweather kept saying it felt like a Controlling spell. But that’s one of those that has a potion component, and she couldn’t figure out how so many people could have been dosed without knowing it. But then Dimity said—“

Hecate’s eyes widen. “The Eccles cakes.”

“Exactly!” Julie grins. “_The Eccles cakes_. Most everyone in the crowd had eaten one. They’d put the potion component of the spell inside, and Mister Hallow activated it right before the lookalike you started cursing the brooms. They locked me and Mildred in the tower because they knew the spell wouldn’t work on us. They thought we’d run for help.”

Hecate frowns. “That seems…overly cautious. Even with you locked away, surely there were still several people left in the crowd who by chance hadn’t consumed the potion. Any one of _them_ could have gone for—help…“

Realization dawns. She blinks across at Julie, horrified. “It wasn’t only that the Controlling spell wouldn’t work on you. They’d planned to take you as well as me, when they disappeared. So it would look like _I_ had—like I had…”

She doesn’t know why it had taken her this long to truly understand the implications of what Julie has been saying. Her mind is still foggy from Hallow’s spell, her thoughts slow and vague, and she hadn’t considered…

“Hecate…”

“So it would look like I had abducted you.” Hecate’s throat tightens. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s what the investigators think, yes. But, Hecate—”

Hecate closes her eyes. “This is all my fault.”

“_What_? Hecate, no. No, of course it isn’t.”

“No?” Hecate demands, opening her eyes again and pinning Julie with a wild look. “If not for me, their absurd plan would never have worked. If not for my—”

“If not for you,” Julie interrupts firmly, “at least one child would be dead.”

“She would never have been in danger in the first place!” Hecate protests. “I—”

“Good evening.”

Both Hecate and Julie start.

Standing at the foot of Hecate’s bed is Miss Thistlereed, the school nurse: a thin old woman in a pressed grey frock. She carries a lamp in her hand, the flickering light deepening the creases in her wrinkled face.

“I see you’re awake,” she says, setting the lamp on the side table among the flowers. She rubs her palms together until they glow, and then holds them over Hecate’s body.

A strange, liquid warmth suffuses Hecate’s skin.

“Everything looks alright for now,” the Miss Thistlereed says after a moment, taking hold of Hecate’s wrist with one hand and examining the timepiece clipped to her apron with the other. She clicks her tongue. “A touch fast. Are you feeling feverish?”

“No,” Hecate says.

“Your head hurting you?”

Hecate doesn’t answer.

Miss Thistlereed sighs.

“Well.” She crosses her arms across her chest and looks between Hecate and Julie. “Well. As I was telling Ms. Hubble earlier, you are free to leave as long as you’ve got somebody with you. Spells like that can have nasty after-effects. I don’t want you left alone for the next twenty-four hours at least.”

Hecate opens her mouth to protest.

“That won’t be a problem,” Julie says, ignoring Hecate’s sharp look.

“Fine,” Miss Thistlereed declares. “I’ll just go and decant your potions, shall I, and you can be on your way.”

Hecate watches her leave, and then turns to Julie.

Julie raises her eyebrows. “What?”

“What are you doing?” Hecate asks, quietly.

“Getting you out of here,” Julie says, “Unless you’d rather stay.”

“I—“

“Right, here you are,” Miss Thistlereed says, hurrying back from the office with two vials of potion. “This one is the pain reducer,” she hands Hecate a blue vial, “and this is the one for spell damage—just a precaution.”

Hecate is about to say something about how, as the Potions mistress, one might expect her to be able to identify rudimentary healing potions unaided, when Julie chimes in:

“Thank you, Miss Thistlereed.”

“Just doing my job, Ms. Hubble,” the nurse says. “Should you need anything, I’m only a mirror away.”

She returns once more to the office, the door closing behind her with a quiet _snick._

“Right,” Julie says, shifting in her chair to wake Mildred. “Shall we?”

“I—“ Hecate swallows. “I suppose.”

Steeling herself, she pushes back the blankets and stands slowly, gripping onto the side table for support.

Her head suddenly feels as if it’s been caught in a Vice jinx. She gasps.

“Alright?” Julie asks.

Hecate presses her lips together. “_Fine,” _she breathes.

After a tense moment, the throbbing subsides into a dull ache.

The stone floor is cold under Hecate’s bare feet. She finds a pair of purple slippers set out near the foot of the bed and gingerly puts them on, fighting a wave of dizziness.

“Ada transferred your things back to your rooms,” Julie says conversationally. After trying once more to rouse Mildred, she gives up and stands with the girl in her arms, rearranging her securely on one hip. “Do you think you’re up for the walk? Miss Thistlereed thinks transference might do your head in.”

Hecate, who is starting to feel lightheaded just standing there, begins walking toward the infirmary door in lieu of answering.

She is stopped before she reaches it.

“Excuse me—Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up, startled, to see a man peering around the edge of a half-open curtain. In the lamplit space behind him, Hecate can just make out the shape of a small body under the blankets of another hospital bed.

The man appears flustered. “I just wanted to say, before you go…thank you.” He steps fully around the curtain. “Thank you for saving my daughter.”

“Your…?”

The man shakes his head. “I should have—sorry. It’s been a long day.” He bows to her. “I’m Mordecai Moon. Audrey’s father.”

“I see,” Hecate says. She is suddenly very aware that she is dressed in only infirmary-issued pyjamas, her hair in loose disarray about her shoulders. She brings a hand up to touch the cool metal of her timepiece. “And…how is she?” she asks, not without some genuine worry. Audrey had been conscious when she’d last seen her, but perhaps—

The man smiles wanly. “She’ll be alright, thanks to you. Her shoulder was a little jarred when you stopped her fall, but Miss Thistlereed’s set it right.” He glances behind him. “She’s just sleeping off the last of the pain potion.”

His eyes grow wet.

Hecate isn’t sure where to look. Over her shoulder, she sees Julie standing in the shadows with Mildred on her hip, watching Hecate with a warm smile.

“I. Yes. Well.” Hecate clears her throat. “Good. We…had best be going. Well-met, Mister Moon.”

**

“I’ve got these for you.”

Julie walks softly across the darkened living room. She’s returned from settling Mildred in her bed, her arms filled with a stack of folded blankets.

Hecate ducks her head against her shoulder, finding it difficult to meet Julie’s eyes. The screams from the stadium echo around her head, pulling at her thoughts like an ocean tide.

For a moment, the only sound in the room is the ticking of the cat-shaped clock on the mantle. The space feels somehow both familiar and strange, like something half-remembered.

Sighing, Julie sets the blankets down and sits next to Hecate on the sofa.

With a sudden, sharp breath, Hecate draws her legs up under her, making herself as small as possible. The pyjamas smell of cotton and sunshine. She shivers. Her head aches.

Julie is quiet beside her.

Hecate’s vision blurs.

Julie breathes, deep and slow. “It isn’t your fault.”

“It is.”

“Hecate, you can’t—“

“Yes I can!” Hecate turns, searches Julie’s face desperately. “It was because of me they formed this plan, because of _me_—”

Julie shakes her head. “If not you, they would have chosen somebody else. They would’ve—”

Hecate clenches her fists. “You don’t know._” _She closes her eyes, pain clawing at her chest. “You don’t _know_.”

But Bakewell had known. He had known all along.

_There are four years between the end of your education and the beginning of your tenure at Cackle’s. _

_Would you care to explain, Miss Hardbroom?_

_Miss Hardbroom?_

_Miss Hardbroom?_

Hecate breathes.

“I wish you wouldn’t…” Julie begins, and then doesn’t finish.

The clock ticks; time seems to dilate in the space between the seconds.

Hecate opens her mouth. “My father…” she swallows. “My father was Horus Hardbroom,” she says, the words carried to her by some unseen force, like a door blown open by a sudden storm. Her voice sounds miles away. “The necromancer.”

Julie says nothing.

“My mother died when I was very young,” Hecate says, all the world fading away as the years collapse behind her, until she is standing once more in the dim rooms of the grey stone cottage where she’d been born. “My father was never a kind man. But after my mother’s death he became preoccupied, reclusive. He hid away for hours in the attic, and when he’d come out…” She squeezes her eyes shut, picturing the man in her mind. The pale face. The threadbare robes. The dark eyes that seemed to grow darker by the day. “I can’t explain it. I…It was like somebody was slowly cutting away at the strings holding him together.”

Hecate takes a shuddering breath, her jaw working. “But I didn’t realize—I never knew what he was doing. I thought—it wasn’t unusual, even before her death, for him to return home under the influence of some illicit potion, and I thought it was…” She grips her hands into fists. “I didn’t know. Not until the day they came to take him away.”

“Hecate…” Julie’s voice sounds strange, rough.

“He was taking Ordinary people from the village. Girls,” Hecate whispers. She closes her eyes. “He was experimenting with Dark magic—and _using _them—using them…to try and bring her back.”

She opens her eyes. “So, you see, it _is_ my fault.”

Julie makes a noise of protest.

Hecate cuts across her. “They were asking about it, in the interview—Bakewell was. Asking why I couldn’t find a position for _years _after I’d finished school.” She shakes her head, twisting the chain of her timepiece between her fingers, tighter, tighter. “It was because I’m his daughter. No one wanted—no one wanted _that _in a school.” She clenches her fist around the metal. “Hardbroom is a common name. The hiring committees never thought twice about it, not at first. I’d be treated to the same interview process as the other candidates, everyone cordial and obliging and… But as soon as they looked into my parentage…” Her chest constricts with anger, disgust, despair. “And the reviewers knew! They must have known all along! I should have seen they were planning to use me against Ada. It was only because of her that I…” Hecate’s throat works. “She _found _me. She offered me the position, after everything_. _I—I should have _seen_ what they were planning. I’m the one black mark on her career! Of course they would have—“ Hecate chokes. “And _Mildred_. I couldn’t—Hackensack cornered us in the corridor one afternoon and all but _promised _Mildred I would—would do to her what my father did to those—those _children. _And I couldn’t—“ She gasps for breath. “I put you in danger. I put Mildred in danger. And I couldn’t—“

“Hecate!”

Hecate starts, her breathing quick and shallow.

Julie is staring at her, horror written in all the lines of her face. Her cheeks are wet.

The room suddenly comes into focus again.

Hecate feels sick.

What has she done?

What was she _thinking _of_, _speaking of all this? And to the one person who seemed to actually—to _actually—_

What Julie must think of her now.

Hecate chokes, scrambling to unfold herself from the sofa.

“I’ll—I’ll go.” She stands suddenly, nearly falling into the low table in front of the fire. Her head spins.

Julie catches her elbow and wordlessly guides her to sit back down.

Hecate puts up a feeble struggle against it and then gives up and lets herself be led, her heart pounding painfully in her temples. She can taste copper on her tongue.

Julie sits next to her, eyes closing.

Hecate watches her, terrified.

Finally, Julie opens her eyes. She’s sitting crosslegged, sideways to Hecate on the cushion, and Hecate can see the tears caught in her eyelashes.

“I don’t know what to say…” Julie whispers.

Hecate’s stomach drops.

Stupid. She feels so stupid.

Julie shakes her head. “I don’t know what to say to make you believe—“ A fierce look crosses her face. “Hecate, none of that was your fault. Do you hear me?” She leans forward, clasping Hecate’s hands in hers and meeting her eyes with purpose. “None of that—not what happened today, or the reviewers’ plans, or the way those other schools treated you, or what that Hackensack woman said, or any of that horrible business with your father…“ She presses her lips together, shaking her head again. “Not one part of that was _ever_ your fault.”

Hot tears stream down Hecate’s cheeks, unbidden. She stares at Julie, unable to move.

Julie shakes her head again, her eyes wet. “Not _one part._ Do you hear me?”

Hecate doesn’t know what to do. She feels so heavy. Heavy and unbalanced and over-warm.

Her breathing shallows.

“And I am ever so very sorry that it happened,” Julie finishes.

Gasping, Hecate has to turn away, curling into herself against the arm of the sofa. Her tangled hair slips over her shoulders, crowding her mouth and nose. She bites down on her lip, her breathing loud and harsh in the quiet room.

After a moment, she feels Julie shifting next to her. Gentle hands gather Hecate’s hair away from her face.

It breaks something in Hecate’s chest. She cries in earnest, harder than she can remember doing since she was very, very small. It feels as if something wild is trying to tear its way through her skin. She struggles against it, helpless.

The hands don’t leave her hair, twisting it softly over her shoulder and holding it there.

Hecate feels the press of Julie’s hand like a founding stone, keeping her body in place while her thoughts toss and turn, while the shuddering of her breath makes her dizzy and vague.

Eventually, her eyes slip closed, and her body sags against the arm of the couch.

The last thing she remembers is the warm weight of a blanket being pulled around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mention of violence against children
> 
> A [very long, very esoteric, but hopefully somewhat interesting] note on the line of succession: 
> 
> a) There are very specific family members to whom a school can pass. In the case of Cackle's, after Ada's mother, the school could have gone to: Ada's mother's sisters (there are none), Ada's mother's sister's daughters (there are none), Ada or Ada's sisters (one: Agatha), and Ada or Ada's sisters' daughters (they have none). In order to be eligible to receive the school, a person in the line of succession would have to be 1) of age and 2) in compliance with the Code. All of this is to say: Ada is the only one in the Cackle family line who is eligible to run the school. 
> 
> b) Because of this, if Ada were to be relieved of her position, the line of succession would be 'open'. When this happens, any age-eligible and Code-compliant witch can apply for the position--though, traditionally, precedence is given to out-of-line family members like Ursula Hallow. 
> 
> c) Many times, if they leave of their own volition, headmistresses who are the last of their line will draw up a Statement of Succession, which documents their choice of successor and must be taken into account by the selection committee in charge of locating a new head. 
> 
> d) If she were still at Cackle's following Ada's removal, Hecate, as deputy head, would have been interim headmistress and a part of the selection committee, and therefore would have been free (and highly likely) to oppose Ursula Hallow's appointment. This is partly why the reviewers wanted her either on their side or out of the way.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	10. Chapter Ten

“Mum, have we got any more jam?”

“Yes, love, on the top shelf. And remember: quiet voice.”

“Sorry.”

Dishes clang. The toaster chimes. A plate is set at the table.

Hecate opens her eyes.

The light from the window is over-bright; pain blooms in her temples.

She shuts her eyes again.

**

“Mum? She’s still sleeping.”

“She had a hard day yesterday.”

“Because of the spell?”

“Yes.”

“But she’ll be alright?”

“She’ll be just fine. She just needs some rest. Don’t you worry. Now, come over here and let’s have a look at your maths.”

**

A knock sounds at the door.

“—oh. Hello, Miss Cackle.”

“Ms. Hubble. I hope you’re having a pleasant day.”

“Er. Yes. Would you like to come in?”

“That would be wonderful! Thank you.”

“Do you need help with those?”

“If you’d be so kind. Miss Hardbroom left them in the infirmary.”

Small footsteps skip over the flagstones. “Hi Miss Cackle. Whoa! That’s a lot of flowers.”

“It certainly is, Mildred. It certainly is.”

**

A timer rings in the kitchen.

“…was covering your classes for the day. She said they had fun with the—what do you call it? VDR?”

“VCR.”

“Yes, that was it…”

Something shifts nearby. The sound of pencil brushing paper.

Sluggishly, Hecate opens her eyes.

The sun has set.

Mildred is sat on the rug near the sofa, hunched over a notebook under a pool of light from the stand lamp. A mess of coloured pencils is spilled out onto the floor next to her; she tosses down a green and picks up a black without looking away from her paper.

Hecate doesn’t make a sound, and yet somehow Mildred senses something.

She looks around, spots Hecate, and smiles. “Hi Miss Hardbroom, you’re awake,” she whispers, putting the notebook aside. “Is your head better?” she asks, and looks somewhere beyond the sofa. “Miss Cackle’s here. Mum’s making fish fingers. Are you hungry?”

Hecate’s head is full of cotton wool.

Footsteps drift across the room.

Ada comes into view.

“Hecate?” Ada says softly, “How are you feeling?”

Hecate scrambles to sit up, a pile of brightly-coloured blankets pooling in her lap. Her vision greys; she presses her lips together against a wave of nausea.

When her vision clears again, she sees a glass of water is being held out to her. She looks up to find Julie smiling gently at her over the back of the sofa.

Flushing, Hecate looks away. She takes the glass and sips it slowly.

“Ladies,” Ada says, “I wonder if you wouldn’t give me and Miss Hardbroom a moment alone?”

“Of course,” Julie says, holding her hand out to Mildred. They leave the room together, Mildred looking back over her shoulder once before they disappear into her bedroom.

The door shuts behind them.

Hecate stares into her water.

She wouldn’t have thought she’d have any emotion left in her, after last night. Even so, as Ada pulls a chair up to the edge of the couch, she manages to feel afraid.

They sit in silence for a moment. Hecate wonders if Ada is waiting for her to speak.

And so, clearing her throat, she does. “Ada, I—“

“I had hoped…” Ada interrupts, staring down at her hands, folded in her lap, “to see you last evening. I was, however, detained by the Magic Council. We’d held the reviewers here for the afternoon, in the old dungeons, so that the Great Wizard could come to record their confessions. But they had to be moved to the jail at Grimsby Castle by the end of the day to await trial, and of course the Council Committee on Criminal Conspiracy insisted they be involved, and so, I’m afraid, my hope of getting back any earlier than eleven o’clock was rather in vain.”

Hecate shifts uncomfortably, wondering why Ada would bother telling her any of this.

Ada looks from her folded hands to Hecate’s face. “I was hoping, you see…” she sighs, her eyes tired and deeply sad, “to apologize.”

Hecate grips her glass. “What?” she whispers, her voice hoarse from lack of use.

“You tried to warn me. About Ursula. About them all.” Ada closes her eyes. “And I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t _want_ to listen to you.”

“Ada—”

“I wanted so badly to believe that she could be better. For selfish reasons.” Ada shakes her head. “I have so little family left, and fewer still that I _like._” She smiles ruefully. “I wanted to believe her sincere, so much so that I ignored the signs.” She takes Hecate’s free hand. “And I ignored you. A witch I would trust with my life.”

Hecate blinks, her throat working.

“And it almost ended in ruin. It would have, if it weren’t for you.” Ada presses her lips together tearfully. “So—I was also hoping to thank you. And I do.” She breathes deeply, squeezes Hecate’s hand, and says, firmly: “I _thank you_, Hecate, for saving our school. I shall never, ever forget it.”

She gives Hecate a long look, as if trying to convey something without words, as if trying to press it under Hecate’s skin.

And then after a moment she withdraws her hand and leans back in her chair, letting her eyes slowly drift about the room.

“I am planning a leave of absence,“ she says, eventually. “It would only be for the summer. And perhaps the last week of term, if I can manage it.” She sighs. “The Hallows left behind three young daughters. Arrangements have been made for them to live with their cousin—and mine—Rose, in Yorkshire. I feel it is my duty to help them settle there, if I can.”

Hecate nods, unsure what else to do.

“I do hope,” Ada says softly, “something good can come of all this.”

**

The school year draws to a close. Hecate spends the next weeks feeling wrung out like a sponge, whether from the after-effects of the projection spell, or the emotional drain of the following days, or simply because it is the end of term, she does not know. Headaches and dizzy spells continue to plague her, though their frequency lessens as the days grow longer into the late spring months.

The students tiptoe around her. She catches them staring at her in class and at meals and as she passes them in the corridors. Even the fourth years are unnaturally quiet—whole weeks go by without a notable disaster.

She wonders whether the sordid story of her father had somehow made it round the school rumour mill. She wonders whether they hold her responsible for the disaster at the tournament, despite Ada’s assurances otherwise.

She tries not to let it hurt her. (It does not work).

Exam week comes and goes in a frantic blur. Hecate sleeps more than she expects to. She had apparently been mistakenly assigned to the same night patrol shift as Miss Gossamer, who knocks at Hecate’s door on the evening in question and tells Hecate not to bother, that she had everything in hand and to go back to bed. It seemed to Hecate a very odd mistake to have been made, for the rotas were assigned by magic and the spell had not once made an error in the twenty years Hecate had been at the school. Still, Hecate finds herself acquiescing, and is asleep within minutes of Miss Gossamer shutting the door again.

**

At the Leavers’ Ball, someone puts Belching Beverage into the punch bowl.

Hecate, nursing a headache, has sequestered herself in the corner furthest from the hurdy-gurdy quartet and does not become aware of this fact until the time comes for Ada to give her well-wishing to the leaving fifth and sixth years.

She thinks she will never be able to forget the formidable noise that echoes up into the silent hall at the close of the Ada’s speech: the sound of forty-some young witches—dressed in their best cloaks and hats—belching as one. She swears she feels it in her bones.

Ada’s hat nearly falls off her head.

The following effort to root out the culprits is a resounding failure. Hecate seems to be the only one taking matters seriously.

Misses Mayweather and Gossamer try and fail to keep straight faces as they interview the girls, and have to excuse themselves into the corridor for an ill-concealed spate of sniggering.

Julie, with very little attempt at decorum, laughs outright to the point of tears and twice interrupts Hecate’s interrogations to congratulate the students on their ‘style’.

Miss Bat is asleep on Mister Rowan Webb’s shoulder and is of no help to anyone.

And Miss Drill, who has had some of the punch herself, cannot speak without belching—a fact which sends the students (and Julie) into further fits.

When the last of the interviews has dissolved into giggles, and the hurdy-gurdy quartet has started up once more, Hecate retires reluctantly to her corner.

“Well,” says Ada, drawing up next to Hecate with a plate of mushroom vol-au-vents, “that was certainly exciting. I wonder how we’ll ever manage to improve upon it for next year.”

Hecate widens her eyes. “You can’t mean you _approve, _surely?” she asks, watching the girls attempt a conga line to what sounds like a medieval funeral dirge.

“I can’t _say_ I approve, certainly.”

Hecate gives her a scandalized look.

“Oh, come now, Hecate,” Ada says, a smile curving her lips. “At least it wasn’t Bumbulum Brew.”

**

On the final day of term, the castle thrums with frenzied anticipation. The corridors ring with shrieks of laughter and the sounds of running footsteps. In the dormitory wings, the contents of travelling trunks spill out into the hallways as their owners pack and repack their contents amidst calls of _where’s that cauldron stirrer I lent you last term? _and _has anybody seen my frogspawn?. _

At breakfast, the girls pass around bits of paper with the chants for their mirrors at home. _Promise you’ll call. Promise. I’ll be at home all summer with my git of a brother._

The school assemble in the great hall for a final review before departure later that morning. The review, meant to begin promptly at seven-fifteen, is delayed nearly a quarter of an hour by continued searches for misplaced belongings and missing cats.

“This,” Hecate says to a first year who has somehow managed to mislay her entire uniform, save her socks, “is why you were told to _pack ahead of time!_”

The girl, dressed in a jumbled disarray of P.E. kit and dressing gown, has the grace to look chagrined.

When at last the school is assembled, Miss Cackle gives her end-of-year address, and the school song is sung for the final time. Miss Tapioca interrupts the assembly just as the girls begin to process out, complaining that someone had shoved their uniform down the garbage chute. The unfortunate first-year claims her garments and hastily re-joins her classmates as they leave the hall, the smell of overripe banana trailing after her.

**

Hecate spends the last hour before departure securing the Potions classroom for the summer. There is a strange melancholy that follows the hollow ring of her footsteps as she walks between the empty worktables in the early morning sunlight. She brushes the feeling aside and runs through her list of cleansing and purifying spells—discovering, in the process, a number of forgotten items: a mangled quill wedged under a cauldron stand, a broken vial left in one of the worktable drawers, a pink hair bobble wrapped around the handle of a pestle.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up to see Addie Coppercauldron standing in the doorway of the classroom, knapsack slung over one shoulder, school cloak exchanged for a denim blazer she wears over her uniform.

She walks forward and places a large glass jar on Hecate’s desk.

“We want you to have this,” she says, peering up at Hecate through the sunlight. “It isn’t much, but we just wanted to say…” She trails off with a shrug.

The jar’s neck is tied with bits of ribbon, bright glass beads knotted into their ends. Threaded through one of the ribbons is a large tag that reads:

_To: Miss Hardbroom_

_From: Year Three_

Hecate walks slowly forward. Upon closer inspection, she can see that the jar is filled with small paper stars folded from scraps of coloured parchment.

“They’re notes,” Addie explains, unscrewing the lid and pulling out one of the stars. It unfolds itself in the palm of her hand, glowing briefly. On the inside is written:

_Dear <strike>HB </strike>Miss Hardbroom,_

_Thanks for saving the school, especially my friend Tara._

_Sincerely,_

_Onata LaRue _

Hecate blinks down at the parchment, her cheeks warming inexplicably.

Bemused, she looks up at Addie.

“It’s not just year three,” Addie says, setting the note down on the desk. “We started it, because of Olive. But then we were working on it during lunch, and some of the other years wanted to write things. We were just going to roll them up—like a message in a bottle, you know. But then there were so many we couldn’t fit them all. It was Geraldine that came up with the star idea, and Miss Drill helped us spell them during our free period…” She pauses, eyeing Hecate oddly. “Are you alright, Miss Hardbroom? Don’t you like them?”

Hecate can’t be sure what her face looks like. She feels…she doesn’t know what to feel…

She thinks of all the ends-of-term before this, when Miss Bat and Miss Mayweather and Miss Gossamer and all the rest would walk into the staffroom with arms full of parcels. They’d sit around the tables, opening up gift after gift, offering each other home-baked biscuits and cakes, arguing over which pupil’s parent made the best shortbread…

_I can’t possibly eat all this, _they’d say, laughing, spelling away mountains of wrapping paper. _And I have stacks more on my desk! At this rate, I could open a bakery!_

“Miss Hardbroom?”

“Yes,” Hecate answers, finally, after several attempts at getting her voice to work.

Addie grins, taking the answer for what it is.

The crow calls for the start of departure.

“Well, I’d better go,” Addie says, adjusting her schoolbag and heading toward the door. “Bye, Miss Hardbroom! Have a good holiday!”

Hecate watches her leave. “Wait!” she calls, taking a few hurried steps forward.

Addie turns around.

Hecate swallows. “…Thank you.”

Addie smiles. “You’re welcome.”

**

With much embracing and tearful goodbyes, the girls take off, year by year, into the air.

“I have never been so glad to see the back of a school year,” Miss Drill says, waving to the last of the girls as they disappear into the horizon. “I think I’ll sleep straight through to August, eh HB?”

Hecate, who has been crossing names off a departure list, pauses. She looks up, blinking, wondering if Miss Drill had actually meant to draw her into casual conversation, or if it had been a trick of Hecate’s overtired mind.

She does not ask _who—me? _but she might have, had she any less tact.

Miss Drill is staring at her expectantly.

“I…yes. Quite,” Hecate manages at last.

As they walk back up to the castle together, dew clinging to the hems of their cloaks, Julie linking arms with Miss Drill, Misses Gossamer and Mayweather talking cheerily to each other at Hecate's elbow, Hecate feels a slow, careful calm beginning to unfurl itself in her chest like the first bloom of spring.

For now, the worry is over.

For now, she can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of part one of this story. There are roughly thirty chapters in total, with about ten chapters in each part.
> 
> I am planning to take two weeks off from posting to catch up with writing and with real-life things (school projects intensify!)--so I will be back with the first chapter of part two on the 10th of November. (Sorry for the long-ish wait, but it is very necessary at the moment!)
> 
> Thanks for reading--and thanks, as always, for all your lovely comments. I'm hoping to get around to replying to them over the next two weeks as well, if school doesn't eat me alive first.


	11. Chapter Eleven

The morning after term ends, Ada leaves for her cousin Rose’s.

At breakfast, she hands Hecate the keys to the headmistress’ office, tells her to forward any urgent messages, and wishes her a pleasant summer. Hecate attaches the key to her belt and feels a curious sense of…she knows not what.

She watches Ada leave from the northwest tower.

The castle empties over the next week, until only Hecate and the Hubbles are left.

Hecate sequesters herself in Ada’s office, sorting through the end-of-year reports and sending terse replies to inquiries from the press, which have been pouring in steadily since the events of the tournament. Each evening she is surprised by the sunset, which burns through the west-facing windows with an insistent brilliance she has never noticed from inside her own east-facing office. It unsettles her—perhaps because she is painfully aware that every minute she spends on administrative duties is another minute lost sorting out the Potions cupboard, which will have to take second priority until Ada’s return.

“Feels strange, doesn’t it?” Julie says over dinner that Friday. It’s the first they’ve really seen of each other since the end-of-term assembly. “The quiet, I mean.” She chews thoughtfully on a Brussels sprout. “Summers were always so loud when I was a kid. I had just the one sister, but my mum’s friend Ruby used to invite us to stay with her for the holidays so Mum could work. She lived on a sheep farm with eight kids, and dawn to dusk there was always something happening. Multiple somethings. It got so you could barely hear yourself think. But we loved it. When we’d go back to our little flat in August, it felt like this—like the quiet was a sort of pressure in your ears. Heavy-like. Makes you feel tired. Or at least it does me.”

Hecate frowns at this, setting her glass of wine down on the table next to a copy of the Ordinary book _North and South. _Julie had just been explaining her plans for teaching a unit in the coming summer term on Ordinary transportation and the Industrial Revolution. She’d had a thought that incorporating subject-matter related literature and film might provide useful insight into the cultural impacts of certain innovations, and she’d asked for Hecate’s advice on filling out a requisitions form to obtain the necessary funds to purchase materials—like this _North and South _book—for the girls.

Hecate's fingers tap absently at her timepiece. Julie’s words run circles in her mind. She thinks about how it feels to return to her rooms in the evenings after a day of teaching, or early in the mornings after patrolling the corridors at night. Most days she craves the solitude, after dealing with students and staff for hours on end. She is, by nature, a solitary creature.

But there are days—many days, if she is honest—when underneath the quiet runs a current of loneliness. It is a painful admission, and one she’d not quite been able to make to herself before.

If she thinks about it from the right angle, she can almost feel the pressure Julie describes.

“You alright, there?” Julie asks quietly, when Mildred's attention is distracted by a flock of sparrows passing by the window.

Hecate nods.

It takes her most of the evening—after the dishes are washed, after they settle back at the table with cups of tea, after Mildred has sprawled herself across the couch to watch a film called _101 Dalmatians_—to work up the courage, to put the words in the correct order.

“I plan to harvest dewdrops tomorrow,” she says, finally. She has made enough headway on the end-of-year reports that she has been able to set aside a morning to complete this task—one which she feels cannot, in good conscience, be left much longer. In truth, she has been looking forward to the time in the greenhouses, after spending so much of the last week shut up indoors. She’s hesitant to invite the Hubbles’ particular brand of chaos into what she’d hoped would be a peaceful Saturday morning, but…

Julie dunks a bourbon biscuit in her tea. “Oh? What for?” She pauses, glancing across the kitchen; Mildred has gotten up to pour herself a glass of milk. “Millie, love, set that on the side before you pour it, please.”

Mildred, who had been attempting to decant the milk with one hand while holding her glass precariously with the other, sighs but does what she’s told.

Hecate blinks. “I was—They’re most commonly used in potions expected to be in long-term storage, as a mould-resistant magic-neutral additive—but that’s not what I meant.“ She sighs. “What I was _trying _to say…That is: would you and Mildred care to join me?”

“Oh!” Julie says, looking back at Hecate, a startled look on her face. She's gone to help Mildred mop up the river of milk she’d spilt down the side of her glass. “Hecate, I wasn’t trying to—I mean, I didn’t say all that to get you to—" She cuts herself off, looking a bit flustered. The dishrag in her hand drips milk sluggishly onto the tile.

Hecate backtracks, feeling suddenly ill. Her face heats unpleasantly. “It is perfectly alright if you don’t wish to. I had only thought…”

“No, no, I just…” Julie trails off, shaking her head. She lets out a breath, seeming to gather herself. “What time?”

“I generally begin around half-seven,” Hecate says, taking a sip of tea for something to do, her heart pounding retroactively in her ears.

Julie wrings out the milk-soaked dishrag in the sink. “What d’you think Mildred?”

Mildred, taking a sip from her overfull glass as she walks back to the couch, nods silently.

“Perfect.” Julie’s smile is a little strained. “We’ll see you then.”

**

Hecate waits by the greenhouse doors, watching the sun rise over the fields and checking her timepiece at intervals.

She’s early. She knows she is. And yet.

Ever since the night of the tournament when, in a moment of weakness, she’d let herself speak of unspeakable things, she’d been bracing herself for the inevitable.

She’d seen it happen countless times before, at school, and at university, and in each successive interview for a teaching position…

_Oh, _they’d say, _that was_ _your father?_

And she’d watch their eyes fill with pity—or hate—or disgust—or whatever brand of smugness cases such as hers seemed to inspire in witches who felt themselves superior.

Even at Cackle’s, she sees the other teachers watching her from across the room and wonders…

She’d hardened herself to it, over the years.

And still, she finds herself waiting for Julie to _decide_ something.

(For her to take Mildred and run as far in the opposite direction as she could.)

And now Hecate has strong-armed her into spending the morning in her company. She’d clearly overstepped, given Julie’s obvious discomfort with the idea, and what if it was because...because...

Hecate flexes her hands at her sides.

_Why, _why, _had she told her?_

She opens her timepiece again.

7:34.

They’re not coming.

“Miss Hardbroom! Miss Hardbroom!”

Hecate looks up to see Mildred skipping along the path ahead of Julie, hair in lopsided bunches, tripping over herself in red Wellington boots.

“Morning!” Julie says, a little breathlessly, as they draw even with Hecate. “Sorry we’re late. Had a bit of a porridge disaster.” She grins at Hecate, her expression carrying none of the awkwardness of yesterday evening.

Hecate raises a prim eyebrow and turns away to hide her relief, busying herself unlocking the greenhouse door.

Sweet, damp air washes over her, pleasantly familiar and long-missed. She steps aside to let the Hubbles enter.

“Whoa!” Mildred gasps, eyes widening.

All around them in the bright sunshine, clay pots and wooden boxes bloom with green. Vines twist themselves into trellises along the walls. Wicker baskets hang suspended from the ceiling, spilling over with stems and leaves and flowers that trail down through the golden air.

Hecate leads them through the narrow aisles toward a sunny spot along the eastern wall.

“Oh! They’re beautiful!”

Julie is staring at the small crop of dewdrops growing in apple crates arranged in rows on the worn potter’s bench. The flowers are small and delicate, their blue petals heart-shaped and translucent like glass. They catch the morning sun, sending quivering arcs of light dancing along the ground, and across their skin, and into the leaves of the fox lilies hanging above them.

Feeling strangely self-conscious, Hecate transfers her store cupboard ledger to hand and demonstrates how to pluck the dewdrop blossoms from their stems, how to measure them on brass scales, and how to decant them into small glass bottles.

Julie proves surprisingly equal to the task.

Mildred, however, perched on a wooden stool between Hecate and her mother, crushes more petals than she harvests, upsets the scales when she leans too far forward, and twice nearly breaks a bottle by elbowing it off the bench.

Hecate, who has been watching this unfold with increasing irritation, opens her mouth to reprimand her—but Julie just sends her a quelling look over Mildred’s head. Julie rights the scales, moves the crate of bottles to the back of the bench, and shows Mildred how to hold the heads of the flowers gently between her fingers. And, to Hecate’s surprise, Mildred improves.

When the harvest is well underway, Hecate transfers a quill pen into her hand and begins writing out labels for the bottles.

“Why’ve you got to put the date on?” Mildred asks, leaning over to watch Hecate work. The ends of her bunches fall over her shoulders, the hair dragging through the mess of spilled soil and discarded leaves on the bench.

“We need to know when they were harvested.”

“Why? Do they go off or something?”

Hecate eyes Mildred. She is unused to this level of interest being professed in her subject, but the girl seems in earnest.

“Most ingredients do,” she replies carefully. “Dewdrops, however, increase in potency the longer they are stored. We need to know the harvest date so we can use them at their proper strength.” Hecate glances down at Mildred. “They act as a preservative.” She pauses, considering. “Do you know what that means?”

Mildred’s nose wrinkles. “I think so. It means they keep things fresh?”

“That is correct,” Hecate allows.

Mildred grins up at her and Julie pauses in her decanting to give Hecate an appreciative smile.

Self-consciousness rising again, Hecate clears her throat. “In the soil,” she says, “dewdrops can live for hundreds of years. When we harvest them, that longevity becomes a magical property that infuses itself into its surroundings.” She pauses, waiting for Mildred’s attention to drift. But the girl is still looking up at her with open curiosity, so she adds: “Witches sometimes keep dewdrops under their pillows, as a token of long life.”

Mildred tilts her head. “Does that really work?”

Hecate looks away and begins pressing corks into a few of the bottles.

“Some believe it does,” Hecate says, after a moment.

“Do you?”

And, without wanting to, Hecate remembers a dark upper room hung with the reedy scent of medicinal potions, the deep voice of the healer droning on in the corridor outside, and her own small hand pushing a clumsy sprig of flowers under her mother’s fever-damp pillow.

She pushes a cork into the neck of a particularly stubborn bottle, her fingers turning white with the pressure.

She is usually better at keeping these things locked away.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate presses her lips together. “No. I certainly do not.”

**

A letter from Ada arrives on a Monday in July.

Hecate receives it in the early morning, but makes herself wait through a day of writing out supply lists and answering (ever more) press inquiries to open it.

At last, when night has fallen and she’s settled down with Morgana and a steaming cup of chamomile, she reads:

_My dear Hecate,_

_I hope all is well with you. I am glad to hear Selection Day went as well as could have been expected—and I am sure the two students you mentioned will improve on further acquaintance! (It is entirely possible that they have never been instructed in the proper use of toad brains, and therefore that the ‘sabotage’ you mentioned was a matter of ignorance rather than maliciousness.)_

_My apologies for neglecting to write sooner. Things here have been rather hectic. _

_The girls are not settling in as well as we’d hoped. The youngest, Sibyl (age six), is plagued by the most awful night terrors, and the eldest, Esmerelda (age ten), hardly says a word. The middle child, Ethel (age nine), is proving to be a difficult case. She claims not to care one jot about her parents’ incarceration, and yet behaves so poorly that I cannot help but think she cares very much. Just yesterday, she threw her dinner plate at her sister’s head, all because Esme happened to mention she missed their father’s roast potatoes._

_Rose seems to think that there was some neglect on the Hallows’ part, especially in Ethel’s case, and unfortunately I am inclined to agree. The girl says things sometimes—offhand, of course—that lead me to wonder. (For example, after the dinner-plate incident, I escorted Ethel to her room so that she could have a moment to herself to think about what she had done, and about how close she had come to seriously harming her sister. As I turned to leave, a hard sort of look came over her face and she said ‘What? Aren’t you going to lock me in?’ Of course, I assured her that I would do no such thing, but she did not seem to believe me, even as I made a show of leaving the door wide open behind me as I left…) I must say I am concerned for her; I worry present circumstances—should we fail to adequately address them—are liable to mould her character in directions I would not wish it to take. And I cannot in good conscience allow that to happen._

_All of that to say: I fear it will be a long summer._

_But tell me how you are getting on with your inventory. Have you been seeing results from the dragon dung? Miss Underwood, over at Amulet’s—_

A knock sounds at the door.

Hecate jumps. Morgana skitters away under a table.

Frowning, Hecate puts the letter aside and crosses the room. She can’t think why somebody would be at the door at this hour—indeed, she can’t think _who _would be there. It is only her and the Hubbles in the castle for the remainder of the month.

She opens the door.

And there stands Julie, looking as harried as Hecate has ever seen her. Mildred is huddled up at her side, dressed in pyjamas, hair uncombed, knapsack over her shoulder, stuffed bear clutched under one arm.

“Hecate, I’m so sorry to ask—”

“What’s happened?” Hecate asks, alarmed.

“It’s my mum. She’s had a fall,” Julie says, breathless as if she’d run all the way across the castle—and then Hecate realizes that that is entirely possible. “My sister just phoned. I need to get to Lancashire tonight. But—“ She looks from Hecate to Mildred and back again. “—They don’t let children under twelve on the ward, and so I—I _hoped _you could—“ She presses her lips together. “Would you look after Mildred for me?”

For a moment, Hecate stares. Then her thoughts catch up to her. She shakes herself, and then opens the door wider to let them through. “I—yes. Yes. Of course.”

Julie closes her eyes. “_Thank you,” _she breathes, ushering Mildred into Hecate’s front room.

Hecate watches them enter, ill at ease. How cramped the room must look, and dim, and bare. She is glad she used a dusting spell only last week.

Julie crouches down next to Hecate’s hatstand and helps Mildred out of her Wellington boots, which seem to have stuck to the girl’s bare feet. She holds Mildred’s knapsack slung over one shoulder as she works. Flickering light from the low fire catches in her hair and deepens the worry lines on her face.

“I don’t know how long it will be,” she says, directing the statement toward Hecate with half a glance across the room as she tugs at Mildred’s left boot. “I’ll call.” She blinks “Or—I suppose…” She looks lost. “You wouldn’t have a phone.” She shakes her head.

“I can mirror you,” Hecate offers quickly, the strained look on Julie’s face making a knot tighten in her chest. She flexes her hands at her sides. “In the evenings. Would that…be alright?”

Julie nods, relieved. “Dimity’s set up my compact to work like that. Mildred’s got the chant for it written down in her school notebook.”

“Good.”

Julie nods, then faces Mildred. “Alright, Millie, love,” she says, gripping Mildred’s shoulders, brushing at her cheeks with her fingers. “You be good for Miss Hardbroom. Go right to bed when she tells you, alright?”

Mildred nods, uncharacteristically solemn. “Bye, Mum,” she whispers. “Tell Granny Hubble to feel better.”

Julie hugs her close, presses a kiss to her cheek. “I will, love.” She squeezes her tightly. “I will.”

Then, slowly, she stands and hands Mildred her knapsack. “Thank you,” she says to Hecate. “Really. I—“ She shakes her head. “Just: thanks.”

Hecate nods.

Julie sighs, closes her eyes, and leaves through the still-open door, pulling it shut behind her.

Mildred watches after her, unmoving.

A silence falls across the room.

Feeling a bit shell-shocked, Hecate crosses to the door and bolts it. That done, she turns to Mildred, who has still not moved.

At a loss for what to do, Hecate passes her by and begins seeing to the task of finding the girl somewhere to sleep.

Hecate does not keep a guest room, and in fact cannot recall the last time another person had set foot in her rooms.

There is a small settee under the window in the front room, where Hecate had sat to read her letter. It will have to do.

Hecate transfers the letter to her writing desk and the half-drunk tea into the kitchen just off the front room. Morgana has made herself scarce, as averse to visitors as Hecate herself.

With a twist of her wrist, Hecate transforms the settee into a small bed and a cushion into a proper pillow. Then, after a moment’s thought, she walks down the short corridor behind the kitchen into her bedroom and pulls a heavy knit blanket from the ancient cedar trunk at the foot of her bed. Though it has been kept there, untouched, for years, the trunk’s preservation spell has kept it fresh and free from dust.

Hecate carries it back to the front room.

Mildred has moved, she is relieved to see. She is now kneeling on the floor next to the Victrola cabinet, her knapsack abandoned on the rug, the stuffed bear still clutched to her chest.

Hecate sets the blanket on the transformed bed.

“She does not like people, as a rule,” Hecate says, softly. She can see the glow of Morgana’s eyes in the dark space under the cabinet.

Mildred sits quietly, her only movement the expansion of her ribs as she breathes. She is wearing a cotton shirt printed with the words _STAR WARS._

“What’s her name?” she asks.

“Morgana,” Hecate answers. She thinks then of finding Mildred in the tower early last summer, and of Mildred’s voice saying _I’ve always wanted a cat._

“Come to bed now,” Hecate says, pulling gentleness from she-knows-not-where. “It’s nearly ten o’clock.”

And, to her surprise, Mildred obeys immediately, rising and walking directly past Hecate to climb into the transformed bed. She saves Hecate the awkwardness of deciding what to do next by pulling the blanket over herself and the bear and turning over to face the window in silence.

After staring helplessly for a moment, Hecate waves her hand to extinguish the lamps and retreats to her bedroom, sitting up for a long while in the dark before finally falling into a fitful sleep.

**

When Hecate wakes again, it is to the blinding glare of morning light falling through her window.

She realizes two things in quick succession.

First, that she had neglected to draw the curtains the night before.

And second, that she is not alone.

She sits bolt upright.

There is a bundle of blankets lying next to her on top of the counterpane, a mess of auburn hair peeking out.

Hecate’s sudden movement seems to have woken the girl, for the mass of blankets begins to move, and Mildred’s face appears.

The girl looks pinched and tired. She blinks in the sunlight, tightening her hold on the bear clamped against her chest.

Hecate gapes at her.

Mildred grimaces.

“Sorry,” Mildred says, her voice soft and gritty with sleep. She shrugs. “I kept waking up, and forgetting where I was, and where Mum was, and so I came in here. I stopped forgetting when I could wake up and see you were there.”

At a loss for words, Hecate closes her mouth with a _click. _

They lie there in silence for a long while, until Morgana begins yowling at the door for breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are with the first chapter of part two. 
> 
> Thank you for all of your kind comments and well-wishes during my two-week break. I really appreciated them!


	12. Chapter Twelve

Mildred seems to return to her usual self as the day wears on. Hecate admits that she is relieved—the still, silent creature of the previous night had been unnerving to witness, and Hecate knows she possesses neither the knowledge nor the ability to provide whatever comfort the girl might have needed.

Not that she has any better idea of what to do with a Mildred who is acting herself. Hecate is fast making the discomfiting discovery that acting as the sole carer of a child—even of a familiar child—is a vastly different matter than simply spending time with that child in the company of their parent, or than acting as the responsible party for a school full of children.

She is, to put it plainly, frighteningly out of her depth.

Child-minding or not, however, Hecate has a long list of tasks to complete and an ever-vanishing holiday in which to complete them. Having accomplished the majority of the administrative duties Ada had left to her, she has begun in the last week to turn her focus to the now grossly-neglected potions stores—which she really begins to fear she will not manage to sort out before the start of summer term.

And so it is with some trepidation that she brings Mildred with her into the Potions cupboard that afternoon. She gives the girl the task of funnelling beetles’ eyes into glass jars while Hecate herself sees to segmenting spiders’ legs. More of the beetles’ eyes end up in the jars than on the floor, but they _do _end up in jars, which is frankly more than Hecate had expected. She reminds herself firmly of this fact as she sets about vanishing the ruined eyes at the end of the day.

In the kitchen that evening, as Hecate frets over what to cook for dinner, Mildred bobs along at her side and manages to ask some intelligent questions about the ingredients she’d encountered in the storeroom.

Hecate, trying to remember for how long one should boil potatoes, manages only terse answers, and at last has to send Mildred out into the front room—ostensibly to look at pictures in Hecate’s _Encyclopaedia Plantis et Animalibus, _but in fact so that Hecate does not shout at her, somehow burn boiled potatoes, or both.

**

After dinner, Hecate mirrors Julie. Following a brief conversation in which they establish that Julie is likely to be away a week or more, she leaves the room to allow Mildred to talk to her mother in peace.

She returns after finishing her evening tea to find Mildred sitting on the edge of the transformed bed, Hecate’s hand mirror on her lap, last night’s stillness settled over her once more.

Mildred barely lifts her eyes when Hecate enters the room. The stuffed bear sits by her side, a tear in its paw exposing the bits of cotton stuffing underneath.

After a moment’s useless staring at the girl, Hecate—who really has very little concept of how often children are expected to bathe—sends Mildred into the bath simply for something to do.

The girl emerges nearly three quarters of an hour later, dressed in decidedly damp pyjamas, dripping water across the stone floors.

Wide-eyed, Hecate drops her reading on the table and rushes forward, peering around the girl into the bathroom.

The room is a disaster—rugs rumpled, bottles overturned, soap dribbling down the sides of the claw-foot tub, water sloshed all over the floor.

Hecate nearly slips and falls as she steps over the threshold. Flailing, she catches herself on the doorframe and sags against it for a moment before slowly turning around.

“Mildred. Hubble!” she intones, her heart still beating hard in her ears. “What is the meaning of this?”

The girl looks up at her, wincing. “I was—I—“

“_Well?_” Hecate crosses her arms, glaring down her nose at Mildred, who suddenly turns defiant.

“I—you didn’t tell me what I was supposed to use!” she says. “I couldn’t find any soap at first, and then I did, but I couldn’t open the bottles. And then I did, and it came out too fast, and I got soap in my eyes, and I couldn’t see, and I accidentally knocked over the bottle, and it spilled everywhere—“ Mildred gasps, her voice getting tighter with distress. “And I didn’t have a towel, so I got water all over the floor, and I—“

“Mildred,” Hecate tries to interrupt, growing distressed herself.

“—looked but I couldn’t find one—“

“_Mildred.”_

“What?” Mildred scowls up at her, her eyes over-bright.

The girl’s hair is a mess, tangled into a rat’s nest and sticking out at odd angles. It soaks into her pyjama shirt, the damp darkening the face of the little spotted puppy printed across the front.

Hecate sighs, tapping distractedly at her timepiece. She is so very tired. “I—it’s not your fault.” She shakes her head. “I should have…should have thought.”

She waves her hand and sets the bathroom to rights.

Mildred blinks.

Hecate leads the girl to her bedroom and opens her closet, pulling a folded towel from one of the shelves. She turns and hands it awkwardly to Mildred, who begins to pat her hair dry while staring resolutely at the floor.

Hecate closes her eyes.

She is not doing well at this at all.

When she opens her eyes again, Mildred has finished and is wordlessly holding the towel out for Hecate to take.

Gingerly, Hecate takes it.

“Your hair—“ Hecate begins, without really meaning to.

“Mum left last night before she brushed it,” Mildred says, addressing Hecate’s wall. “I didn’t want to ask you.” She hitches a shoulder.

Hecate swallows.

She thinks how utterly unfair it is that this child should be left with only her for company.

“Have you brought a brush?” she manages, at last.

**

Hecate sits behind Mildred on the transformed bed in the front room and gingerly works at the tangles in her hair with a blue plastic brush, the light of a solitary lamp falling over their shoulders.

She’s set the Victrola to play_, _if only to save them both sitting in uncomfortable silence.

Mildred holds herself very still, and Hecate casts around desperately for something to rouse her.

_What did your mother say? _ she thinks of asking. _Is there word on your grandmother’s condition?_

But neither of those subjects seem the cheerful sort of thing one should talk about to a lonely child.

_How did you find the illustration of beetle brains in the encyclopaedia?_

Hecate rolls her eyes at herself. A stunning conversationalist she is not.

But it puts her in mind of an idea.

**

The next morning, she sits Mildred at the worktable in the Potions cupboard and places in front of her a stack of small boxes, a sheaf of parchment, a quill, a blotter, and a bottle of Unspillable Ink.

Mildred looks up at her curiously. There’s a chill in this wing of the castle, and she’s worn a lumpy red cardigan over her dungarees. It’s easily the brightest thing in the room.

Hecate opens the first box to reveal several bundles of dried cattails.

“I would like you,” Hecate says, in her classroom voice, “to draw labels for each of these boxes of ingredients. They need not be detailed, but I should appreciate some degree of accuracy.”

Mildred leans forward, peering at the cattails.

“Can I pick them up?” She glances up at Hecate.

Hecate frowns. “Why?”

“Just to look at them closer, so I can draw them better?” At Hecate’s indecision, Mildred makes a face very near an eyeroll. “I remember the rule about not touching things if I don’t know what they are,” she says, with what Hecate feels is uncalled-for exasperation, “but you could just _tell_ me what they are, and then I’d know, and then it would be alright, right?”

Sighing, Hecate takes each box from the stack, removes the lid, and lines them up in front of Mildred along the far side of the table.

“These are cattails, wintergreen, English ivy, lemon verbena, lavender, and sage,” she instructs, pointing to each box in turn. “None of them are harmful to the touch,” she allows.

“Yes, but _can_ I touch them, though?”

“So long as you are careful—yes, you may remove _one sample each_ for closer study,” Hecate relents.

She watches as Mildred removes a cattail from its box, scattering seed hairs across the table in the process. The girl makes to blow them away; Hecate hastily steps forward to vanish them before they have the chance to contaminate everything else in the cupboard.

“I will be across the room, should you need anything,” Hecate says, eyeing Mildred warily as the girl lays the cattail across a blank piece of parchment.

Mildred nods, but doesn’t look up from her work. Hecate turns reluctantly away to begin recording jars of mouse jelly in her inventory book.

She has barely finished the first line when—

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate presses her lips together and breathes out through her nose. “_Yes, _Mildred?”

“Can you open this?”

Hecate turns around to see what _this _is.

Mildred is holding up the bottle of ink.

Crossing the room with a sigh, Hecate takes the bottle, uncorks it, and passes it back before turning once more to her task. Not for the first time, she wonders what she was thinking, bringing the girl into her workspace like this…

She reminds herself she’d had very little choice in the matter. Not if she wants to begin the next term with a fully-stocked supply cupboard.

“Miss Hardbroom?” comes Mildred’s voice again, not two minutes later.

Hecate closes her eyes, sets down the jar she’s holding, and turns around slowly, pinning the girl with a look.

Mildred watches her hesitantly. “Erm. I don’t really know how to use this.” She waves the quill in the air.

Hecate blinks.

Then she stands there for a moment, uncertain.

She’s encountered students with poor writing skills before, to be sure, but she’s never had to teach anyone how to simply _use a pen._

Shaking herself, she conjures a chair and sits at the table next to Mildred, taking the quill from her hand.

“How do you get the ink in?” Mildred prompts, rising to her knees and peering over Hecate’s shoulder.

Hecate looks from Mildred to the quill and back again. Slowly, she dips the tip of the quill into the ink bottle, raising her eyebrows at Mildred in emphasis.

Mildred frowns. “Alright,” she says, reaching for the pen.

Hecate hands it to her.

Tongue caught between her teeth, Mildred settles down in her chair and presses the quill to parchment, her hair slipping over her shoulders.

_Crack!_

“Sorry!” Mildred shouts, staring at the broken tip. She looks at Hecate, wide-eyed. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

Hecate grits her teeth. “That’s alright,” she manages. She takes her penknife from her pocket and trims a new tip. Mildred watches with open fascination that makes Hecate’s cheeks heat.

“Here,” Hecate says stiffly, holding out the finished product.

Mildred takes the pen but doesn’t move to refill it. Instead, she stares at it as if it is poised to bite her.

Hecate feels she is supposed to say something, but doesn’t quite know what. “Just—try and be gentler,” she attempts. It sounds forced to her ears.

Mildred looks at Hecate as if gauging her intent. Hecate tries to keep her face open and only manages a strange grimace.

Still, with a look of determination, Mildred leans her elbows on the table, dips the quill pen clumsily into the ink—getting a great deal more up the sides of the pen than into the nib itself—and presses it gingerly to the parchment.

A great splodge of ink seeps onto the page.

Mildred gasps. “I did it!” She grins at Hecate. “I did it!”

Hecate refrains from saying that what she’d done is somehow manage to find a way to spill Unspillable ink. She gives a short nod.

Eager now, Mildred dips the pen again and—after a few false starts—begins drawing experimental lines across the parchment, apparently determining how to press the quill to achieve thicker and thinner effects. One of the lines turns into a picket fence, another into a broomstick, and another into a shape that Hecate begins to recognize as her Victrola cabinet.

She is impressed despite herself, and a little mesmerised. For a long while, she doesn’t even remember to consider leaving the table and continuing on with her work.

“This is the _bats_, Miss Hardbroom!” Mildred says at last, when the page is filled with little inked pictures. “You can make it _move, _you know, sort of like watercolour!” She looks at Hecate. “Do you get to write with this all the time?”

Hecate, who has never thought of _getting _to write with ink any more than of _getting _to drink water or _getting _to wake up in the mornings, doesn’t know quite how to reply.

But she needn’t, because Mildred has set the used parchment aside and is soon absorbed in capturing the likeness of the cattail. And so Hecate gets up and quietly returns to her mouse jelly.

By the end of the afternoon, Mildred has finished all of her illustrations. She has done each plant from multiple angles, and has even drawn smaller close-up pictures of their leaves and flowers.

She hands Hecate her most recent drawing, of a stalk of dried sage.

“I tried to get the fuzz right,” Mildred is saying, “but I think it would be better if I had some water to mix with the ink, to thin it a bit.”

Hecate stares down at the paper, and then at the girl, who is sitting on the edge of her chair with ink-stained fingers, the sleeves of her cardigan pushed up clumsily around her elbows.

“These are…” she begins, “…these are very good, Mildred.” Which is an understatement she feels almost guilty making. She clears her throat. “Thank you.”

Mildred grins.

**

In the evening, Hecate makes onion soup, largely because she cannot find much else in her cupboards.

Mildred sits on the floor under Hecate’s kitchen table, attempting to lure Morgana out from under one of the chairs with bits of the bread roll she’s eating. The soles of her mismatched socks are grey from walking shoeless through the castle.

Hecate stirs the soup and feels an odd lurch in the pit of her stomach, as if she’d fallen sideways into another life, one where things had gone differently…

She shakes herself.

_Stupid._

The soup begins to bubble.

She waves her hand and dims the flame.

**

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up from her reading to see Mildred standing at the half-open door of her bedroom, the now-familiar stillness settled about her shoulders.

“Have you finished mirroring?”

“Yes,” Mildred says, pushing open the door. She pads quietly across the room, Hecate’s mirror in one hand, hairbrush in the other, stuffed bear tucked under one arm. After a brief consideration, she climbs up onto the bed next to Hecate.

“Mum says goodnight.”

Hecate isn’t sure if she’s meant to respond, so she doesn’t.

Mildred sets the mirror on the counterpane and fumbles with the brush before holding it out to Hecate.

Hecate stares at it for a long moment. Then she sets her reading aside and takes the brush from Mildred’s hand.

The girl’s hair is less of a mess than it had been the day before, but there are still knots in places and stains of what might be ink in the ends of her hair. Hecate thinks of the braids and bunches and ponytails Mildred normally wears and wonders if that was yet another thing she should have known to do.

Mildred draws her knees up to her chest, her striped leggings bunched up unevenly. “They did the surgery today,” she says softly, as Hecate works on a particularly stubborn knot.

Hecate stops brushing.

“They had to put a plate in her leg.”

Hecate frowns, trying to imagine what use Ordinary physicians could have for putting dishware in someone’s leg. It must be some sort of turn-of-phrase…

Mildred is quiet for a long while.

Morgana slinks in through the open door and leaps onto an upholstered stool in the far corner of the room, watching Mildred carefully through slow-blinking eyes.

It is the first time Morgana has willingly entered a room with Mildred in it, and Hecate wishes she could think of some way of pointing that small victory out to the girl without sounding completely absurd.

“She keeps forgetting. About the stairs.”

Hecate, again occupied with working out the knot, at first does not catch Mildred’s meaning.

“Auntie Mo moved house, and Granny Hubble forgets where she is sometimes.” Mildred fiddles with the tear in bear’s paw “That’s why she fell.”

“…is that what your mother told you?” Hecate asks, finally, for she cannot imagine Julie relaying the story in such bald terms.

“No,” Mildred says, pulling harder at the tear. “But I hear her talking on the phone with Auntie Mo, sometimes. I don’t _try _to listen, but I still hear them.” The stitching tears a little, and Mildred pulls her hands away. “Auntie Mo wants to put Granny Hubble in a home, and Mum doesn’t want that, but Auntie Mo says Mum doesn’t see Granny Hubble every day, so she doesn’t _know._” Mildred sighs, chewing on her thumbnail. “Auntie Mo says she’s found a nice place for her, with no stairs, and a garden, and bingo on Thursdays. And she keeps asking Mum to help pay for it, and Mum keeps saying she’s already paying to help Auntie Mo to keep Granny at home…But now she’s fallen down the stairs.” Mildred hugs her knees to her chest, gathering the bear up with them. “Mum was crying on the phone. She was pretending she wasn’t, but she was.”

She turns her head, presses her cheek into her knee. “She used to do that all the time,” she says, very softly, “before we came here.”

Slowly, Hecate puts down the brush.

She has no concept of how to respond.

She is entirely useless at comforting other people. It was always Ada who managed that sort of thing, when one of the girls was in need of it.

But Ada is not here.

There is only Hecate.

She casts around for something—anything—to do, to say.

Ada usually brings the girls a cup of tea and tells them that everything will be alright.

But Mildred is perhaps a little young for tea. And Hecate, for herself, despises being told that everything will be alright, when she knows very well that it may not be.

She wonders if this is the sort of thing she was meant to have learned from a mother. She doesn’t remember her mother well enough to know, one way or another.

Unbidden, she recalls Julie’s hands holding her hair on the night of the tournament.

And so, with great trepidation, Hecate reaches out and gathers Mildred’s hair off her shoulders.

The girl doesn’t move away, which Hecate takes as a positive sign.

After a moment’s indecision, she shifts the hair between her hands, dividing it into three and beginning to weave it into a long plait, the way she wears her own hair to sleep after she’s washed it.

The clock ticks on the side table. Morgana’s tail twitches as she watches the pair of them from across the room.

Mildred’s ribs expand as she breathes, the fabric of her shirt brushing Hecate’s fingers as they work.

When Hecate reaches the end of the plait, she glances around for something to bind it with.

“We forgot to pack my hair bobbles,” Mildred whispers.

Her voice startles Hecate a little.

“Never mind,” Hecate says, softly. “Hold this a moment.” She hands the end of the plait to Mildred and reaches behind to pull open the drawer of the side table. After a moment’s rummaging, she locates a length of the thick blue yarn she uses to bind the ends of her own hair.

“Here,” she says, taking the braid back from Mildred. She winds the yarn tightly around the hair several times before expertly knotting the ends together.

“Done?” Mildred asks.

Hecate hums her assent.

Mildred turns around to face Hecate, shaking her head experimentally, as if to be sure the plait won’t come loose.

Apparently assured, she gives Hecate a small smile before hopping off the bed, taking the brush with her.

**

When Hecate wakes the next morning, the bundle of blankets is next to her on the counterpane, Mildred’s face barely visible in the grey dawn.

Taking a steadying breath, Hecate watches her sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“Miss Hardbroom!”

Hecate, who is attempting to remove the neck of a whole plucked chicken she’d transferred up from the school kitchens, closes her eyes.

Was it too much to ask to have three minutes to herself?

“Miss Hardbroom!”

But Mildred’s voice _did_ sound strange—like she’s trying to form the words using as little air as possible.

Hecate had left Mildred to sort through clean laundry in the front room, a task she’d thought was fairly accident-proof. But who knew, with that girl? Perhaps she’d managed to—to strangle herself with a pair of stockings, or—

Hecate sets down the cleaver and hurries out of the kitchen.

“Miss Hardbroom!” Mildred says again, this time barely above a whisper. “Look!”

At first, Hecate cannot see what Mildred is referring to—unless it’s to the complete mess she’s made of the folding. The wicker clothes basket is tipped on its side, its contents spilled out onto the rug in all directions. Mildred has made a haphazard effort of folding the trousers and shirt she’d worn yesterday, and has draped one of Hecate’s dresses over the chintz footstool. The rest—a number of socks and underthings, Hecate’s grey pyjamas, a jumper Mildred had worn to pick wild brambles two days ago—has been abandoned in favour of several dark bath towels which Mildred has piled up around her like the walls of a fort.

“Look!” Mildred says again, still in that odd strangled voice. She doesn’t turn to look at Hecate—doesn’t even really move her mouth to speak—which Hecate finds strange.

And then Hecate sees: there is a pair of slow-blinking eyes peering up at her from the pile of towels.

Mildred seems to be working hard not to breathe—not to move a muscle, for fear of frightening the cat away.

It is the closest Morgana has come to the girl in the five days she’s been staying with them.

In spite of herself, Hecate feels a little thrill of pride—though whether directed at the girl or the cat, she doesn’t know.

“I see,” she says.

“She just came over and laid down!” Mildred breathes. “I didn’t even do anything.”

She stares at the cat. Morgana stares back.

“Hi,” Mildred whispers. “You’re very pretty.”

Morgana blinks lazily at the girl, accepting the praise.

Hecate snorts.

“I know we’re not friends yet,” Mildred continues. “But I hope we can be soon.”

**

The girl spends most of dinner pestering Hecate about things Morgana might like to do.

After having been asked for a fourth time whether she thought Morgana preferred tuna or salmon, Hecate abruptly excuses herself to the bathroom, where she slumps against the door and breathes quietly for several minutes.

She’d spent the entire morning in Ada’s office, attempting to deal with a set of particularly tedious administrative matters while simultaneously ensuring that Mildred, who had developed what Hecate considered an unhealthy fascination with the Confiscation Cupboard, did not manage to steal away with any contraband. The afternoon had found them in the greenhouses harvesting valerian root—though Hecate had been interrupted so frequently both by Mildred’s questions and by messages from the Magic Council that she had barely managed to fill and label six jars’ worth.

And now…

Hecate wonders whether it makes her a terrible person that she cannot stand to be more than a few hours in Mildred’s presence before becoming entirely overwhelmed and irritable.

She stares at herself in the mirror for a long while.

Then, having gathered her wits sufficiently, she steels herself and returns to the table.

Mildred is still sitting there, staring quietly down at her plate of roast chicken.

Hecate feels a pang of guilt. Avoiding Mildred’s eyes, she takes up her knife and fork and prods awkwardly at her asparagus. She’d overcooked them; the stems are stringy, the ends burnt.

“Morgana,” she says finally, laying her silverware down again and flexing her fingers, “has been known to enjoy catnip toys.” Which was true, after a fashion, though Morgana has not played with them since she was a kitten. “I can help you to make some tomorrow, if you like.”

Mildred looks up from her plate. “Okay.”

**

They mirror Julie after dinner.

She informs them that, if all continues to go well, she plans to return in two days.

This sets Mildred squealing with delight and jumping around the front room, chanting _Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!_

Hecate has to intercept her before she trips over the footstool and flies headlong into the pile of still-unfolded laundry.

**

That night, Morgana follows Mildred into Hecate’s room, waits for the girl to climb onto the bed, and then jumps up and settles herself near the footboard.

Mildred makes a small noise of glee at this—before covering her mouth with her hand and staring at the cat in apprehension. But Morgana stays where she is.

Mildred has apparently given up even attempting to begin the night on the transformed bed in the front room; she’s brought her nest of blankets with her and sits with it draped around her shoulders, the bear propped up in her lap, as Hecate brushes through her hair and weaves it into a braid.

When Hecate’s finished, Mildred stretches cautiously out on the bed, mindful of the cat.

Hecate, at a loss for what to do at this juncture, takes up her reading and picks up where she’d left off.

It is not long before she feels Mildred grow restless beside her. The girl shifts, readjusts her blankets, fiddles with the bear’s paws, and opens her mouth several times without speaking.

Finally, staring straight up at the ceiling, she says: “What are you reading?”

Hecate peers down at her, bemused. “_The Cauldron,” _she replies, after a moment_._ Then, considering, she elaborates: “A journal that publishes articles on brewing.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s…not _about_ any one thing. It covers several different subjects. Being a journal.”

“What’s the one you’re reading?

Hecate frowns. “It is unlikely to be of any interest to you.”

Mildred wrinkles her brow. “How do you know?”

Hecate sighs. “The title is, _Excellent Excrement: A Review of Eight Uses for Dragon Dung._”

Mildred giggles. “Somebody wrote a whole article on _that?_”

“I did warn you.”

Giggling some more, Mildred shrugs. “But I _am _interested. I just think it’s funny.” She turns her head on the pillow. “What part are you at?”

“There aren’t—“ Hecate sighs. “It’s not as if you would understand where I am, in relation to other things. It’s not a storybook.”

“Well, there are eight uses, aren’t there?” Mildred asks, scratching at her nose.

“Yes…?_”_

Mildred tilts her head. “So which use are you on?”

Hecate lets out a huff of exasperation. “_Seven_.”

“What’s seven?”

Hecate opens her mouth, shuts it, registers Mildred’s expression of open interest, and resigns herself. “_Seven_ is as a pH balance for acidic solutions.” She glances down, raising her eyebrows at the girl.

Mildred makes a face at her. “I _know _about pH, Miss Hardbroom. I’m not a baby. We did tests with litmus paper at school.”

She sounds long-suffering, which for some reason makes a smile pull at the corners of Hecate’s mouth.

“My mistake,” she says, smoothly. “Then this will of course make perfect sense to you.” She readjusts her grip on the journal, clears her throat, and reads:

_There is archaeological evidence that dragon dung may have been used for this purpose as far back as the Stone Age. Winthrop and Dunlap (2014) hypothesize that Stone Age witches may have rubbed dung on the insides of their cauldrons before brewing primitive acidic potions like Fever’s Bane. Of course, Revealing spells can only tell us so much…_

Hecate reads three pages aloud before she registers that Mildred’s breathing has slowed. She looks down to see the girl has fallen asleep, curled in toward Hecate’s side with the bear tucked under her chin.

**

The next day, as promised, Hecate sits Mildred down at what has become her usual place at the worktable in the store cupboard and lays before her several scraps of linen, bits of cotton, spare twine, a bottle of dried catnip, and a mortar and pestle.

“What’s all this for?” Mildred asks, tilting her head at Hecate in confusion.

The looped braids Hecate had fashioned that morning flick across the shoulders of the girl’s dress—a ridiculous blue cotton frock printed with rows and rows of small cartoon cats.

That morning, Mildred had asked for something to keep the ends of her hair out of her way when she drew, and the only thing Hecate could think to do was the style she herself had worn when she was very small: two plaits with their ends doubled back on themselves, tied in place with ribbon. (Rather short of both the supplies and the talent required to achieve such a thing, Hecate had substituted thick knitting yarn for ribbon, had divided the hair rather inexpertly so that one plait was slightly thicker than the other, had needed to call upon an absurd amount of frustrated effort to devise a method for fastening the loops in place—had, all in all, considered it a poor result. She’d been ready to pull it all apart, but Mildred had ducked her hands, run off to inspect herself in the bathroom mirror, and declared it _brilliant_.)

“Not what,” Hecate says, clearing her throat. “_Whom_.”

Mildred frowns. “_Whom _what?”

Hecate rolls her eyes. “For _whom _is the question, not for _what. _And the answer is: for Morgana,” she says, affecting primness to hide the slight reddening of her cheeks. Ridiculous. She’s become completely ridiculous.

“Oh!” Mildred says, eyeing the assembled materials with renewed interest. “Are we really making cat toys? I didn’t think you actually meant that.”

“Yes, well. I did,” Hecate says briskly, a bit stung. “Now pay attention.”

And, reaching across Mildred for the jar of catnip, she shows Mildred how to grind the plant with the mortar and pestle, how to sprinkle the resulting powder on a bit of cotton, and how to bind it all inside the linen.

To Mildred’s credit, she watches closely, and her first effort is only slightly more ragged than Hecate’s.

It is for this reason that Hecate feels confident enough to leave the girl to her task and proceed with her own work: disposing of the eleven spoiled jars of pickled newts that line the high shelf near the window.

“Mum’s coming home tomorrow,” Mildred says, as Hecate climbs the ladder and adds a scoop of sun-dried dragon dung to the first jar.

Hecate wonders whether she is meant to reply, or if this is one of those instances in which Mildred likes to lay out obvious facts ahead of asking an improbable question.

Mildred is silent for a moment after that, the _tink-clink _sounds of the mortar and pestle filling the room.

Hecate takes the opportunity to observe the acid-base reaction happening in the pickling liquid. Vanishing highly acidic solutions into the ether had the potential to cause volatile reactions that could leak across planes of existence, so it was always best to add a pH balance beforehand. Hecate has never tried dragon dung before; she’s not had the time to do anything more than cursory calculations, but she hopes it may turn out to be a cost-effective replacement for limestone…

“Can we make a fruit pie?”

And there: the improbable question.

A quick Revealing spell shows the reaction is complete: the pH is neutral. Hecate feels a small thrill of success. She vanishes the jar and moves on to the next, sliding the ladder along the rails.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

“_Yes, _Mildred?” Hecate asks wearily, opening the next jar and wrinkling her nose at the particularly offensive smell.

“I said, can we make a fruit pie?”

Hecate realizes she’s left the sack of dragon dung behind and slides the ladder over again to retrieve it.

“_Miss Hardbroom?_”

Sliding the ladder back into place, Hecate closes her eyes. “_Mildred, _I am in the _middle _of—”

“Alright, alright!” Mildred sighs deeply. “I’ll ask later.”

“That would be advisable.”

Hecate adds the appropriate measure of dung to the next jar. She leaves it to react and transfers the inventory book to hand. Drawing a quill out of the air, she crosses off one jar of pickled newts.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate stills.

Three minutes. Can she not have _three minutes to herself_?

“Miss Hardbroom, I think there’s—“

Hecate turns around, one hand gripping the rail of the ladder. “Mildred, what have I _just_—?”

But Mildred is staring at a point beyond Hecate’s shoulder.

There is an odd rumbling sound, and before Hecate can turn around—

“_Miss Hardbroom!_” Mildred shrieks.

Glass shatters with percussive force.

Hecate braces for impact—

But it never comes.

Slowly, Hecate opens her eyes.

Suspended in the air all around her are glittering shards of slimy green glass, fluttering like leaves in a gentle breeze. The light from the window catches them, scattering sunrays across the dull stone and dark wood of the cupboard. The smell of rotten eggs stings her nose, pulls tears from her eyes—

Taking a shuddering breath, Hecate glances around for the source of the spell.

But all she sees is Mildred.

Mildred: standing on her chair, chest heaving, holding one small outstretched hand in Hecate’s direction.

For a long moment they just stare at each other, wide-eyed, unmoving.

Then, with a sudden noise of distress, Mildred drops her hand and runs out of the room.

The glass crashes to the floor.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

“Mildred!” Hecate shouts, hurrying to the classroom door and sticking her head out into the corridor. “Mildred!”

The corridor is empty.

Not wanting to transfer and risk missing the girl on her way, Hecate walks briskly in the direction of her rooms, her thoughts racing.

The girl has magic.

The girl has _magic._

Mildred is not in Hecate’s rooms, or any of the corridors in between, nor is she in the kitchens, the staff room, or the southwest tower, when Hecate thinks to look.

_Of course_, Hecate frets, pacing the sweltering tower room, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

_Of course_ _she’d gone and lost the girl not a day before her mother is set to_—

Hecate stops in her tracks and transfers to the corridor outside the Hubbles’ rooms.

And there sits Mildred, curled up in the closed doorway, sobbing.

Hecate has never seen the girl cry before. She is startled by how deeply it distresses her.

“Mildred…” she whispers, catching her breath. She takes a careful step closer, flexing her hands open.

Mildred looks up, her face red and tear-streaked.

Concern tightens Hecate’s chest. After a moment’s hesitation, she kneels down near Mildred, the stone floor hard and cold under her knees.

“Please…” Mildred says, shaking her head at Hecate. One of her plaits is coming undone from its loop. The fabric of her dress is pulled over her knees so that the little printed cats’ faces distort into Cheshire grins. “Please, Miss Hardbroom, you can’t—you _can’t _tell her.”

Hecate’s mind is slow with worry. It takes her a moment even to register that the girl had spoken. She frowns. “Can’t tell who…what?”

“_Mum_,” Mildred says, hiccoughing. “You can’t tell Mum I can—“ She starts crying again, turning her face away toward the door.

Hecate has a sudden suspicion.

“Mildred…” she asks. “Have you known about this?”

Mildred shrugs, avoiding Hecate’s eyes. She sniffles. “Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. Sometimes things would happen, and I thought…” She hiccoughs. “But then I’d try to do it again, and I never could.” She pulls her knees closer to her chest. “So I just tried not to think about it.”

Hecate is at a loss.

“That’s what happened,” Mildred continues, staring straight ahead at the doorjamb. “When you found me in the kitchens, ages ago. I was trying to make Mum breakfast, because she was having a sad day. And I slipped off the stool and dropped the tray.” She screws up her face. “But it never fell. It just sort of…floated. Then I got scared, I guess, and then it actually fell.” She glances at Hecate. “And then you came in. Remember?”

Hecate does, the picture of it in her mind’s eye tinted with a sort of painful brightness. Mildred had been so small then. Smaller, even, than she is now.

“And then,” Mildred continues, “I heard the girls talking about learning how to mend things with magic, and so I tried to do a spell to fix Puss’s nose where it’s all torn, just to see if…if I could. But I couldn’t. I tried all that summer, even after you found me in the tower that time. I thought you maybe guessed what I was doing, but you didn’t. I practiced it in my room after that.” Mildred sniffs, wiping at her nose. “But nothing—“ she hiccoughs “—nothing ever happened. And I thought I was just making it up in my—“ she hiccoughs again “—my head.”

Hecate watches the tears streaking down Mildred’s cheeks as if caught up in a spell. She can’t seem to breathe properly—or if she can, it does her no good; her lungs ache like they’re air-starved.

She stares at her hands, twisted in her lap, and wills them to reach out—but what good would it do? The girl had run for her mother and gotten a closed door. A closed door, and Hecate.

Taking a great shuddering breath, Mildred pitches forward and hides her face in her folded arms.

The ache in Hecate’s chest deepens.

She wishes she were the sort of person who said words like ‘darling.’ She thinks she could mean them, just now.

Instead, she swallows and swallows and tries to speak.

“You are aware,” she begins, leaning toward the girl a little. She doesn’t know what they teach in Ordinary schools these days. “You do know that magic isn’t…isn’t something to be ashamed of? That witches are—that we aren’t—that is to say, that we aren’t _all_…“

Mildred turns her head, resting her cheek on her knees. Through her tears, she gives Hecate a look that says she is barely refraining from rolling her eyes. “_Evil_?” She wrinkles her nose. “Yes, Miss Hardbroom. I _have _met witches before, you know.”

Hecate blinks, then gives the girl an exasperated look. “Well, then,” she demands, a little flustered, “what’s the matter?”

Mildred glances away, all seriousness again. Tears leak down her chin. She swipes them away with the back of her hand.

Hecate’s throat works.

“I don’t want to leave her alone,” Mildred says, finally.

“Leave who alone?”

“_Mum._”

Hecate’s brow wrinkles. “Leave her alone? What do you mean, ‘leave her alone’? You wouldn’t start school for another two years, at least. Besides which, you happen to _live _in one of the greatest witching schools in England. You could see your mother every day, if that is what you wish—“

“You can leave someone alone even when you’re in the same room with them!” Mildred insists, frowning at Hecate like she’s missing some obvious conclusion. “You can be all alone, even when they’re standing right in front of you!”

Hecate, who is suddenly hit with a particularly vivid memory of staring across the Potions lab in her fifth year at an unturned head of blonde hair, swallows painfully.

“Granny Hubble doesn’t even remember mum’s _name_ anymore! She calls her _Edith—_and we don’t even know who that is!” Mildred says.

“Mildred…”

Mildred shakes her head. “Mum was sad, _all the time_, before we came here. She never had any friends, because we were moving so much, and she had to look for work.” She makes a face. “And when we came here, everything was so different, and weird, and everyone was so—so _mean. _And then they weren’t, but we still didn’t fit in. We’ve _never _fit in, anywhere!” Mildred hugs her knees to her chest, more tears spilling down her angry little face.

Hecate opens her mouth, but there are tears clogging her throat that close off words.

“And—and she always said,” Mildred hiccoughs, wiping irritably at the wisps of hair that have stuck to her damp cheeks. “_I’m glad I’ve got you with me, Millie. I don’t know what these silly witches are talking about, half the time. But at least I’m not the only one._” Mildred looks at Hecate helplessly. “But she _is._” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to leave her _alone_.” She narrows her eyes. “You _can’t _tell her.”

Hecate looks at her. “Whether I tell her or not…will not change the fact that you are a witch.”

“I don’t _care!_” Mildred shouts, her voice raw.

“Mildred, listen to me—“

“No!”

“Mildred!” Hecate sighs, then presses her lips together. She needs to get a hold of herself if she is to get through to the girl. This was not the place for wanton emotion. Regardless of her feelings, Mildred must not be allowed to continue on in this reckless manner. “You cannot…” Hecate shakes her head, looking down at Mildred with as much gentleness as she can manage. “You cannot continue to ignore the truth.”

“Yes I—“

Hecate glares at her. “Mildred, _listen_ to me. You cannot continue to ignore this truth about yourself. Undisciplined magic can be unpredictable, even dangerous. You _must _learn to control it.”

“But I don’t _want _it,” Mildred protests. “Can’t you just make it go away? _Please_?”

Hecate shakes her head. “Magic is a part of who you are. Your mother…” Her throat works. “Your mother loves you very much,” she manages. “And I believe she will understand that your having magic doesn’t lessen her connection to you…any more than her being Ordinary lessens your connection to her.”

Hecate thinks of Julie on her first Parents’ Evening, smug and smiling; Julie cheering with Miss Drill at the Wildwood match; Julie at the kitchen table, learning magical theory over a plate of lasagne… “I believe,” she says, “it is possible to belong to both worlds.”

Mildred sniffles. “Really?”

Hecate gives her a small, tremulous smile. “I believe your mother already does.”

**

Hecate turns another page in the book.

…_under fifteen cases in the last half century, though the accuracy of this number is uncertain. Witches of Ordinary origin are generally only discovered through some unplanned or traumatic intersection with the witching world (see: The Case of Madrigone Moorhead, p. 556), and it may well be that more exist than have been accounted for…_

The needle on the Victrola switches tracks.

Another of Chopin’s nocturnes begins to play, the notes fading slowly into being after a whisper of silence.

Morgana makes a noise in the kitchen. Hecate turns her head to make sure she’s not got into the blackberry pie that’s cooling on the side.

She can just make out the shape of the cat in the blue dusk that’s settled around them—crouched on the table, ready to jump.

“Come out of there, you menace,” she says softly, mindful of the sleeping child curled up at the other end of the settee. “She’ll have our guts for garters if you ruin that pie.”

She and Mildred had spent the afternoon making the pie using the brambles they’d collected a few days prior. Though Hecate had sacrificed a good deal of her own time and sanity to the task—and is unlikely ever to be able to remove all of the flour from the wood-grain of her table—she had been warned in the strictest terms not to touch it until Julie had arrived back. As if pie thievery had been a regular habit of hers.

“I can transfer you, if you’d rather,” Hecate says to the cat, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

With an officious glare, Morgana hops soundlessly from the table and waltzes into the front room. She stares up at Hecate for a moment before passing her by, jumping onto the other end of the settee, and curling up next to Mildred.

She does not once take her eyes off Hecate.

Hecate sniffs. “If you’re attempting to offend me, you’ll have to do better next time.”

Morgana lets out a huff and tucks her nose into the crook of a paw.

Raising her eyebrows, Hecate goes back to her reading.

…_origins are unknown. Some, like notable 17th-century Grand Witch Veridia Snaggletooth, believe Ordinary witches to result from upswellings of free magic in the locality of their birth. In ages past, certain notions of ‘stolen magic’ were popularized by Exclusionists (for more on Exclusionism, see p. 1116), who used this [unfounded] understanding to justify the social persecution and/or stake-burning of Ordinary witches. While these notions are now considered outdated, it is important to note that Ordinary witches are still today seldom well-integrated into witching society. Many report experiencing a distinct lack of support—and even hostility—from within the witching community._

_In her now-infamous memoir, _One White Rabbit, _Eglantine Price writes that a lack of access to education and cultural resources poses a significant obstacle to an Ordinary witch’s development—and that these deficits can “reproduce Exclusion by-any-other-name” (Price, 1951, p. 213). When Ordinary witches are—_

A knock sounds at the door.

Straightening, Hecate sets her book aside and walks noiselessly over to answer it.

Julie stands in the doorway, the light from the corridor falling past her into the room. “Hello,” she says. A tired smile flickers across her face.

Hecate nods at her, stepping aside to let her through.

Moving quietly, Julie puts her things down near the hatstand, her car keys jangling in the pockets of her denim jacket as she hangs it on a hook.

Hecate tries to name the pleasant calm that settles in her chest on seeing her again.

She’s missed her, she thinks.

She takes that knowledge—the not-quite-surprise of it—and tucks it away.

“Mildred is asleep,” Hecate says, needlessly, as Julie walks across the darkened room toward the settee. “She wanted to wait for you. But it got to be rather late…”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Julie whispers, watching Mildred for a moment before turning to Hecate with her hands in her pockets. “Traffic. Don’t know why, this time of night, but…”

They fall into a silence.

Chopin is still playing in the background. Hecate flicks her hand to switch it off.

“Would you…like some tea?”

Julie smiles. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “That would be great, thanks.”

Hecate leads her into the kitchen and busies herself with the kettle.

“Oh!”

Hecate turns around to see Julie pulling one of the catnip toys from the seat of her chair, where she’d apparently just sat on it.

“Those are—we made those for the cat,” Hecate says, not wanting Julie to think she was in the habit of keeping bundles of old rags lying about her kitchen.

“Yes, Mildred told me all about it,” Julie says, sitting down once more and resting her hands atop the table, her fingers worrying at a paper band around her wrist that reads VISITOR in block letters. She chuckles. “She really loves that cat. On the mirror with me this week it was _Morgana this _and _Morgana that_.” She looks over at the settee, where Morgana is still curled up near Mildred’s chest, blinking in the dark. “I don’t think she’ll want to come back with me, to our poor catless home.”

Hecate fetches the tea from the cupboard and sets two cups on a tray. She considers cutting a slice of pie for Julie, but decides she had better wait until Mildred was awake if she wished to avoid being told off by a nine-year-old.

“Hecate, was she…” Julie asks, after a short silence. She fiddles with the cat toy. “Was she really that worried?”

Hecate turns to face her, her heart sinking.

Julie looks up at her sadly. “…About what I’d say?”

They’d told Julie about Mildred’s magic on the mirror the night before.

Mildred had chewed on her nails the whole time, and had squirmed so much next to Hecate that Hecate thinks one of her ribs might have taken a permanent impression of Mildred’s elbow.

Hecate had wondered whether it would be better to wait and tell Julie in person, but in the end it would have felt wrong to let Mildred mirror her that night and pretend as if nothing had happened. And so Hecate had sat next to Mildred on the settee and the story had come out, slowly and painfully, the drab hospital walls shifting behind Julie’s image in the mirror as she nodded along, the light too dim to really make out her expression.

Seeing Julie’s face now, Hecate wonders again whether she’d made the right decision.

The kettle shrieks.

Hecate pours the water into the teapot and brings the tea tray to the table, taking the seat across from Julie.

“Only I’m afraid I didn’t say the right thing to her,” Julie continues in a rush. “It was—to be really honest—it _was _a shock. Not a bad one!” she hastens to say. “Just—I never suspected.” She closes her eyes. “How could I not _know?_ She’s my daughter. I should have known. I should have—“

“There was nothing you could have done,” Hecate cuts across her softly.

“Well, I should have done something more than I did, shouldn’t I?” Julie asks, resting her elbows on the table and digging her hands into her hair, “If she was feeling so scared to tell me.”

Hecate glances out toward the front room, where Mildred’s socked feet peek out from under the blanket Hecate had draped over her earlier that night.

“She wasn’t scared,” Hecate says. “She was…concerned.”

Julie sighs. “She shouldn’t have been either of those things. She should have…” She looks up again, running her hands down her face. She shakes her head. “I never want her to feel like she has to hide herself from me. About anything. I know what that’s like. And I told myself I’d never do that to her…” She looks at Hecate dejectedly. “But I suppose I have done anyway, haven’t I?”

Hecate watches her across the table, trying to think of something to say.

Julie blinks, then shakes her head ruefully. “Sorry. I don’t mean to...go on.” She gives a humourless laugh. “It’s been a long day. A long week, really.” She leans back in the chair, seemingly lost in thought.

The teapot glows briefly. Hecate pours out two cups and hands one to Julie.

“Thanks,” Julie mumbles.

Hecate starts several sentences in her head before settling on “How is your mother?”

Julie wraps her hands around the cup. “Fine,” she says. “She’s recovering well, they say. There’s a place she can stay after she gets out of hospital. She can’t be in a house with stairs, so…well, my sister will be happy, anyway.” Julie gives a brief, self-deprecating smile. “She’s been telling me that for months.”

Hecate stares uncomfortably down into her tea, remembering the family arguments she’d been made privy to, second-hand, through Mildred.

“Are _you_ alright?” she asks softly.

“Me?” Julie wrinkles her brow. “Why?”

_She was crying on the phone_, she remembers Mildred saying.

_She pretended she wasn’t, but she was._

Hecate thinks, suddenly, that Julie is sometimes very good at appearing as though nothing is the matter.

She remembers Julie in the bathroom, that first summer term, commanding herself to _just pull it together._

“It would be understandable if you weren’t,” she says, after a moment.

“Oh,” Julie says softly.

Hecate busies herself casting a cooling spell on her tea.

When she looks up, it is to find Julie staring down at the table, blinking rapidly.

Hecate’s heart clenches.

Had she said something wrong? She hadn’t meant to be upsetting—but that rarely counts for anything in her case.

Julie sniffs and swipes at her eyes.

Hecate doesn’t know what to do.

“Sorry,” Julie says after a while, forcing a watery smile. “I’m just being silly.”

“You are _not_.”

Julie sniffs again. “What?”

Hecate crosses her arms, looking awkwardly away. “I’ve already told you: it’s understandable.”

Julie chuckles wetly. “If you say so.”

“I just did.”

Julie laughs outright, more tears leaking down her cheeks. She wipes them away, looking across at Hecate with warm eyes.

“_What_?” Hecate asks, her cheeks heating.

“You,” Julie says, shaking her head. “Just you.”

“Mum?”

The blankets shift on the settee and Mildred sits up, rubbing at her eyes. Morgana jumps to the floor.

Julie stands and rushes over, kneeling down in front of the settee and gathering Mildred in her arms.

For a moment they just breathe together.

Then Julie pulls back and gathers Mildred’s face in her hands.

“I am so, so very sorry for making you feel you couldn’t tell me,” she whispers fiercely, her voice rough with tears.

Mildred shakes her head, sniffling. “I just didn’t want to leave you alone,” she says.

“Leave me alone?” Julie asks, brushing stray hair out of Mildred’s face. “How do you mean?”

“You’re not magic,” Mildred says, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want to make you feel like you were…like you didn’t fit. With me. Anymore. Like you were alone here, if I was like everybody else.” She hitches a shoulder. “And—and you weren’t.”

Julie shakes her head and starts to say something, but Mildred interrupts.

“But then Miss Hardbroom said,” she glances toward Hecate. “—she said we could belong in both places. Here and with Ordinary people. She said you already did.”

She says the last softly, like a question, like everything depended on the answer.

Julie’s eyes roam over Mildred’s face, her throat working.

“I think Miss Hardbroom is exactly right,” she says finally, the words thick. “And you know what?”

“What?” Mildred whispers, curious and visibly relieved.

“You’ll _always_ fit with me. No matter what.” Julie smiles tearfully. “Alright?”

Mildred nods, smiling slowly back. “Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eglantine Price is the name of the witch character from _ Bedknobs and Broomsticks._ In the film, she is an adult witch learning magic by correspondence (which she later uses to help head off a Nazi invasion), and in the universe of this story she is one of the most well-known Ordinary witches in British witching history and an early advocate of Ordinary witches' rights.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Ada returns in August, a week before the start of term.

Hecate meets her for tea that Tuesday afternoon. They talk of administrative matters, of the ongoing investigation into the Hallow conspiracy case, of the resulting the public interest that has followed them all summer, of the wellbeing of the Hallow children, and of the new first-year students—before finally turning to the subject of Mildred Hubble and her magic.

“I must say, I’m not as surprised as I could have been,” Ada says, her eyes sparkling as she takes a sip of heavily-sugared tea. Warm sunlight falls across the room. Pendle dozes on a footstool under the window, his tail flicking to the rhythm of the old clock on the mantle.

Hecate’s eyes widen. “You’re…not?”

“Well,” Ada says, placing her cup back on its saucer, “I had wondered…” She folds her hands in her lap. “You remember when they first arrived. Ms. Hubble said it was Mildred who had pointed out the advertisement we’d placed.”

Hecate nods. She remembers well. But she’d dismissed the incident at the time; it wasn’t unusual for young Ordinary children to be able to see through For-Our-Eyes-Only spells.

“And then,” Ada continues, “there were a number of times when I’d noticed—oh, the sorts of things you’d notice around a child’s First Magic. She’d come in from the rain only a little damp. She’d trip down the stairs and somehow manage to end up on her feet.” She hums. “But you know, I stopped noticing things quite as much after her first summer here. She must have learned to hide it, somehow.” Ada shakes her head. “Poor thing.”

Hecate thinks about the last three Saturdays she’s spent futilely attempting to teach Mildred elementary exercises in magical control. They’d sat across from each other at Hecate’s kitchen table, Hecate with a mounting headache, Mildred alternately defiant and tearful, as Mildred made attempt after unsuccessful attempt at using her magic to roll a marble from one end of the tea tray to another. Hecate had ended each session despairing at the girl’s lack of focus.

It hadn’t occurred to her—despite Mildred’s pleading about _getting rid_ of her magic—that the issue might have been less about a lack of focus and rather more about persistent stubborn denial. Hecate had thought she’d said enough to convince Mildred of the necessity of learning to control her magic…but perhaps she hadn’t been sufficiently firm with the girl.

Ada chuckles.

Hecate starts, blinking across at her.

“You have that particular look on your face,” Ada says, smiling. “The one that speaks of a sudden breakthrough. Will we be reading about a ninth use for dragon dung in the next issue of _The Cauldron?_”

“No, no,” Hecate says, setting down her cup. “I apologize. I was…thinking.”

Ada takes another sip of tea. “It’s what you do best,” she nods, raising her cup toward Hecate in a toast.

**

The following Saturday, only a day before the students are set to arrive back, Hecate answers a knock at her door and lets Mildred into her rooms.

“Don’t bother,” she says, when Mildred moves to kick off her trainers.

Mildred looks up at her curiously.

“We’ll be outside today,” Hecate explains, and then attempts to ignore Mildred’s grin.

They make their way out into the fields and then into the woods beyond them. The sun filters down through the branches of the birch trees, the forest floor dancing with light. Mildred skips on ahead, dried leaves flying up around her as she skips through the low brush.

“Stay where I can see you!” Hecate calls, as Mildred disappears behind the thick trunk of an old oak.

Mildred’s head pokes around the side of the tree. “How do I know when you can’t see me?”

Hecate rolls her eyes. “Make logical assumptions.”

Mildred falls into step next to Hecate as she passes. She wrinkles her brow. “Like what?”

“Like,” Hecate says, “the fact that I cannot see through tree trunks.”

Mildred giggles. “Okay.” She is quiet for a moment. “What if I walk backwards? Then I could see you seeing me.”

She makes to do so and then nearly falls into a rotted log.

Hecate grabs her elbow to steady her. She purses her lips.

“Or not!” Mildred says, with a sheepish grin, before falling into step beside Hecate once more.

A quarter of a mile beyond the treeline, they reach a clearing. Sunlight falls in dusty curtains onto the green summer grass. A small pond shimmers under the arch of a knotted beech.

“Wow!” Mildred whispers. She looks at Hecate, smiling. “It’s so pretty!”

She takes off toward the water, her left trainer coming untied as she runs.

“Mildred!”

Mildred stops, turning around. “You can still see me!” she protests, her arms flopping emphatically by her sides.

Sighing, Hecate walks to meet her at the water’s edge.

A small school of minnows flits around in the shallows, the sun catching their scales like dewdrops.

Mildred crouches down next to the water, watching them.

“What are we doing?” she asks after a moment, addressing the ground.

The question is so broad Hecate isn’t sure how she’s meant to answer it.

“Are we stopping?”

Hecate frowns. “Here? Yes.”

Mildred shakes her head, her chin bumping against her bent knees. She picks up a twig and swirls it in the water. The minnows scatter. “I mean, are we stopping magic?”

Hecate frowns more deeply. “No, we certainly are _not_. I’ve told you: you must learn.”

Mildred looks up, her face troubled. “But I can’t do it,” she insists. “You keep saying I’m not trying hard enough, but I am! I just _can’t_!” She pokes her stick into the mud. “If you’re just going to yell at me again, I don’t want to do it, anyway.”

Hecate looks away, remembering how she’d lost her temper last week after she’d caught Mildred blowing on the marble to make it move. “I…shouldn’t have shouted at you. I apologise.” She looks back. “But you _can _and you _must._”

Mildred shrugs, digging her stick harder into the ground.

Hecate presses her lips together. She conjures a blanket and lays it down before settling herself on it, smoothing out the wrinkles at its edges.

Mildred glances at her over her shoulder, and then turns her attention back to the water.

Hecate watches the shifting of the sunlight across the girl’s back, the mud already caking her shoes, the careless movement of her hands as they reach over the water and wonders absently whether she’ll later be in the position of having to explain to Julie why she’d returned her daughter looking significantly more like a bog witch than she had at the start of the afternoon.

“How much do you know about the tides?” she asks, forging ahead with what might well be a foolish plan. Perhaps she ought to have thought of an object lesson that could be taught indoors.

Mildred wrinkles her nose. “The tides?”

“Yes, the _tides_,” Hecate says, despairing at the state of Ordinary schooling. “The rise and fall of the sea.”

Making a face, Mildred plants her stick firmly into the mud and crawls onto the blanket to sit next to Hecate. There are bits of dried leaves caught in the ends of her hair.

“I _know_ what tides are,” she says, crossing her legs beneath her, her trainers smearing mud across the blanket. “I just don’t get why we’re talking about them.”

“I’ll explain in a moment,” Hecate says. “Answer the question.”

Mildred sighs. “I know there’s low tide and high tide.”

“Do you know what causes the tides?”

“The moon?”

“Yes,” Hecate agrees. “And the sun, and the rotation of the Earth.”

Mildred tilts her head, looking thoughtful. “Why doesn’t the water just fly off the Earth when it’s spinning?”

Hecate blinks.

Mildred looks up at her. “Is it because of gravity?”

“I…suppose,” Hecate ventures. She shakes her head. “But that is beside the point—“

“You were just talking about gravity, so how is gravity beside the point?” Mildred asks.

“It is _b__eside the point I am currently trying to make_,” Hecate grits out.

Mildred sighs. “So what _is_ the point?”

Hecate closes her eyes, willing herself patience. “The point,” she begins, “is that magic works in much the same way. Water is pushed and pulled by gravitational bodies—“

“That’s still gravity,” Mildred mumbles.

“_Kindly_ do not interrupt,” Hecate says, fixing Mildred with an emphatic look. “Water is pushed and pulled by gravitational bodies, just as magic is moved around us and within us by natural and mystical forces.”

Mildred makes a small sound before clamping her hand over her mouth, as if to physically prevent herself from interrupting.

Hecate sighs. “_Yes, _Mildred?”

“Erm. What are the forces?”

Gratified by the show of interest, Hecate answers. “There are a great number of forces that can produce magical energy. The phases of the moon, for example…” She trails off at the odd look on Mildred’s face. “What’s the matter now?”

“Are phases of the moon real things?”

Hecate frowns. “What do you mean, ‘are they real things’?”

“I mean…the moon doesn’t really change shape, does it?”

“No,” Hecate allows, unsure what the girl is trying to say.

“It’s always there, just the same, right?” Mildred tilts her head to the side. “We just see it different sometimes because of where we are, and where the sun is.”

“That is…correct.”

“So why does it change anything about magic? The tides go out and in because the moon pulls them with gravity. But you said gravity was beside the point. And the moon doesn’t really go full and half and all the rest, so why does it change magic?”

Hecate stares at the girl.

She thinks of the chapter in the year one Spell Science text on the effects of the lunar phases on casting strength, of fifth-year essays on potions traditionally brewed during the waning gibbous, of the coven meetings held under the light of the full moon, and of the way blue-moon magic shimmers like silver in her blood.

None of these things have ever been explained to her—or _by_ her—beyond the mere statement of fact.

Hecate feels uneasy.

Had nobody thought of asking before?

Surely they must have. And yet…it seems to Hecate like trying to explain something essential but unknowable, like the passage of time.

It feels impertinent to even consider questioning the matter.

“Is it—do you think it’s like in poems?” Mildred asks, chewing thoughtfully on the end of her ponytail. Sunlight falls in dappled patches through the tree branches, drifting like rose petals across the blanket. “Like how you can say the moon does something, or the moon is something, but it’s actually about what the moon _means _and not what it is?” She pulls one grass-stained knee up to her chest and squints up at Hecate. “I forget what it’s called. It sounds like ‘before,’ I think.”

“Metaphor,” Hecate says, feeling a bit dazed.

Mildred lights up. She tosses her hair aside. “Yes! That’s it!”

Hecate’s eyes drift over the girl’s face. She feels her chest tightening inexplicably.

“Sorry,” Mildred says, after a long silence, watching Hecate carefully. “I interrupted again.”

Hecate shakes herself. “No. No, I…” She can’t put into words what she’s thinking.

_It’s what the moon means._

“What were you trying to tell me?”

Hecate blinks. “I was…”

“About water and magic? And the tides?”

Hecate clears her throat. “Yes. Magic…is pulled within us and around us by forces outside of ourselves,” she begins again, curling her fingers and pulling at the water in the pond so it rises toward them. “And, just as water can carve away at the earth as it is moved by the moon, so we can move with the push and pull of those forces and begin to use the energies they lend us for our own purposes. This is the power of a witch: to take that which is at hand and make it go her way.” She pauses, fixing Mildred with a grave look. “But power is dangerous when uncontrolled.”

She twists her wrist. The water surges upward in a frothy swell, breaking its banks and snapping Mildred’s twig in two. Mildred jumps, scrambling backward on the blanket.

Hecate relaxes her hand. The water recedes back into the pond, leaving a mess of sodden grass in its wake.

Mildred’s gaze follows the path of the snapped twig as it is carried away by the sudden current.

“This is why,” Hecate says gravely, “you cannot pretend away your being a witch. You cannot deny who you are. The magic is a part of you, and also a part of everything that pulls against you. You must understand your own abilities, so that you do not destroy yourself and everyone around you. You must understand those things that pull at you, and learn how to move _with_ them, so that they do not pull you apart.”

Mildred looks up at her, her eyes wide and searching.

“So, you see: you _must_ learn,” Hecate says. This is the essential thing. “Do you understand?”

At last, Mildred nods, letting out a long breath that shakes with the movement.

**

At the First Feast, Ada announces the staff’s renewed efforts to ensure school security—outlined in a thorough twenty-eight point plan that has Miss Bat nodding off into her potatoes.

The first years look small and young and overawed. Inevitably, three or four of them overindulge in items from their tuck boxes the night before the start of classes, and Hecate has to spend the pre-dawn hours brewing fresh batches of Stomach Soothing Serum for Miss Thistlereed.

Hecate has the fifth years first thing on Mondays, which in the past had been a small source of relief, as they could generally be depended upon to at least pretend at studiousness. However, the summer holidays appear to have done nothing to mitigate the lawlessness of this particular cohort. At the end of the period, Hecate’s ears are steaming and Geraldine Bluebell and associates have been assigned two weeks’ detention—with Mister Rowan Webb, as Hecate has no desire to put herself through their presence any more than necessary.

Between her stint as acting Head over the summer and the recent giving over of her Saturday afternoons to Mildred’s magic lessons, Hecate had not, in fact, managed to complete her inventory and restocking of the Potions cupboard by the start of term. And so, reluctantly, she modifies her lesson plans toward the ingredients she has on hand and spends late nights in the store cupboard and in the school greenhouse making up for lost time. All the while, her marking piles up on her desk, untouched, and there is nothing for it but to rise particularly early on Sunday mornings and devote most of her day to reading essays.

To make matters worse, a member of the Prosecutorial Office of the Council Committee on Criminal Conspiracy has contacted her in order to obtain an affidavit containing her recollection of the events of the tournament and of the months of the reviewers’ residency in the castle so that her account might be submitted as evidence during the pre-trial proceedings of the Hallow conspiracy case. And so she spends several evenings in a row attempting to recall and record some of the more painful events in recent memory, all the while agonizingly aware that the hours spent thus engaged were hours which would have been much better spent on any of the other increasingly numerous and pressing tasks in need of her attention.

By the third Wednesday of term, Hecate is already counting the days until the winter holidays.

“Mildred’s listening to a book on carnivorous plants, so thanks for that,” Julie calls over her shoulder as Hecate enters the staff room that afternoon. They’re both early to the staff meeting.

Hecate collapses into the armchair next to her. “Unfortunate as that sounds,” she replies, “I fail to see what it has to do with me.”

Julie puts down her pen. “She says she saw something the other day in one of your potions books.”

Hecate closes her eyes, remembering. “Succulents.” She gives Julie a sardonic look. “She was disappointed, apparently, that the name didn’t imply vampiric tendencies.”

Julie snorts. “And so you told her about Venus fly traps?”

“I mistakenly thought it would buy me a moment’s peace.”

“Amateur mistake,” Julie agrees lightly. “If she somehow manages to get her hands on one, she’s keeping it in _your_ rooms. She wants to call it Arthur. To go with—“

“Morgana, yes. I am not so far gone that I cannot recall the name of my own familiar.”

“And yet, you look exactly that far gone,” Julie says, sounding concerned. “What’s happened now?”

Hecate taps at her timepiece. It would be rather easier to answer the question of what _hasn’t _happened….

She sighs, opting to answer with the most recent episode in what is turning out to be an extremely unfortunate summer term. “One of our first years decided she would rather let her frog run loose in the classroom than incorporate its mucous into her Boil Balm.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course, it sent all the girls into hysterics, trying to stop it jumping into their cauldrons…” She raises a hand to her temple. “If I could go just a single day without some kind of disaster…”

“I think I know the feeling,” Julie says. “You know I’m doing Ordinary transportation systems this term? Well, the little toy buses I’d brought in keep disappearing. I’d thought maybe Mildred had taken them to play with. But then last evening I got an angry note from Miss Bat. Apparently the girls have been building a sort of bus racing track at the back of the Chanting classroom. She only discovered it yesterday, when one of the little buses flew clear across the room and nearly hit her in the face.”

“I’m surprised she noticed it at all,” Hecate muses, “given she spends the majority of her lessons unconscious.”

“Who’s that?” Miss Drill asks, breezing in through the door and dropping into a chair opposite Julie.

Julie tells the story again, and Miss Drill visibly struggles not to laugh.

“I know,” Julie says ruefully. “I don’t know whether I should give out to them or commend them for taking creative liberties with our class material.”

“I’d commend them for actually managing to make use of Chanting,” Miss Drill quips.

“Hush!” Julie says, caught between laughter and reprimand.

The crow calls four. Shortly after, the door opens again, admitting the remainder of the staff—including Mister Rowan Web and Misses Tapioca and Thistlereed.

“Good to see you all here,” Ada says, after everyone has gotten their tea and biscuits and settled into their customary chairs. The afternoon sunlight settles sleepily around them. “I hope today finds you well.”

There are a few polite nods of assent.

“I’d like to begin by recognizing our very own June Mayweather for her forthcoming article in _Spellwork_, ‘Far from Frippery: The Effect of Handwaving on Silverman-Style Switching Spells,’ which we can all look forward to reading in next month’s issue.”

Everyone applauds, and Miss Gossamer whistles like she’s at a sporting match. Miss Mayweather’s cheeks darken.

“As I’m sure you know,” Ada continues, once the noise has died down, “we have been given special dispensation from the Magic Council to continue operating as normal until our next quinquennial review.”

Some of the staff whisper amongst each other.

“However,” Ada says, “I have taken the time to dream up a few improvements to our current operations, and I would like your input before we go ahead.” She clasps her hands. “Firstly, I have been reminded recently of the benefits of diversified study, and I should very much like to expand our students’ opportunities for enrichment by once more increasing the variety of classes we offer.”

Hecate narrows her eyes.

“I thought perhaps we might begin by adding art or theatre to the curriculum,” Ada says, smiling around the room. “Many of the other witching schools have anticipated us in this, and I think it is high time we joined them.”

“How would we fit it in?” Miss Drill asks. “The rota’s already full.”

“Excellent question, Dimity. I wouldn’t want to ask anyone to give up valuable teaching time,” she says, eyeing Hecate in particular. “I’d thought—much as we had done when adding Ordinary Culture—“ she nods at Julie “—that we might convert one of the afternoon study periods to class time. This would only affect one afternoon a week for each year group. It has come to my attention that these periods are not being utilized to their full potential,” she says, winking, “and I think this may be just the thing to rectify that.”

“Surely, we would want to encourage the girls to spend _more_ time on their magic,” Hecate says, frowning. “Would this not simply encourage their idling away the afternoon?”

“That is certainly one opinion on the matter,” Ada says, smiling. “And I would be happy to hear any further thoughts you might have at a later date.”

Hecate closes her mouth.

Ada gives her a firm nod before turning back to the room at large. “And now to my second point. In the interest of diversifying our own abilities as well as our students’, I have invited a number of colleagues from our sister schools to come and teach week-long seminars on pedagogical styles of their choice.” She surveys the staff’s faces. “Now, I know we may all still be feeling a bit shy of strangers in light of the events of last year. However, I assure you, these witches and wizards are extremely well-respected in their fields and they have each come very highly recommended.”

The room is silent.

“The first seminar will take place in around two months’ time, during the last week of October.”

She clasps her hands together and looks around the room. “Well, that’s all I have for you! Anything to add?”

Dimity stands and makes her yearly bid for a sports day, looking a bit subdued.

Afterwards, the staff filter out into the corridor.

“Is it just me,” Miss Gossamer asks, breaking the silence, “or did that feel a bit like being bowled over by a sphinx?”

“Not just you,” Miss Drill says, arms crossed. “D’you think something’s happened?”

“What? Like the Magic Council forcing her to make changes?” Miss Mayweather asks.

“Maybe the ‘special dispensation’ wasn’t as ‘special’ as it could have been,” Mister Rowan Webb adds, eyebrows raised.

“I dunno. The Great Wizard’s a big old prick, though,” Miss Drill says. “And you’ve all seen it: Cackle’s has been in the news all summer, because of Hallow and her lot. And it’ll probably get worse once the trial starts. Wouldn’t put it past the old codger to be putting pressure on Miss Cackle to make things look all bright-and-shiny this year, if pressure’s being put on him first.”

“You don’t think he’s threatening her?” Julie asks.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Miss Drill says darkly.

Hecate, feeling a shiver of dread, privately agrees.

_**_

Autumn comes slowly. Summer carries its warmth into the first weeks of October; the girls hurry out of doors after classes each day, eager to soak up the last fading hours of sunlight before the long march of winter. Mister Rowan Web can be spotted out in the fields in the late afternoons, singing a bedding-down chant over the wild reeds and grasses so they’ll survive the cold. The corridors near the kitchens smell of spice; Miss Tapioca debuts a recipe for lamb seasoned with mace that has everyone choking into their napkins at dinner.

Miss Drill has been teaching Mildred to fly.

“I can already get the broom up into my hand and everything!” Mildred tells Hecate one Saturday, bouncing around the kitchen as Hecate prepares her tea—and hot milk for Mildred. “And next week she said we could try going all the way round the courtyard!”

Hecate, who had already heard all of this sitting at the Hubbles’ kitchen table last night, hums vaguely.

“And she said when I’m good enough, we can fly down to the village for ice cream!”

Hecate carries the tea tray to the table. Mildred climbs into her customary chair, and Morgana emerges from the front room to curl up under it.

“That is all very well,” Hecate says, pouring Mildred’s milk. “But the fact remains that you have yet to make much progress with your exercises.”

Mildred sighs, taking a sip of milk that leaves a moustache on her upper lip. “They’re not as _fun, _though.”

“They’re not meant to be. Magic isn’t about _fun._”

Mildred frowns at her. “Flying’s fun. _That’s _magic.”

Hecate stirs her tea. “Flying is a mode of transport.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. And there’s all sorts of other stuff you do with flying, too. Like broomstick displays! Miss Drill was saying—“

“Yes, never mind what Miss Drill was saying,” Hecate says, impatient, and eager to ignore the sudden twinge in her chest. After all these years, you’d think she’d have managed to shake it… “Drink your milk and get on with your work.”

Letting out a huff, Mildred does as she’s told.

A quarter of an hour later, the girl’s cheeks are flushed with exertion, and the beetle she’s meant to be changing into a button is still crawling about on the tea cosy.

“Did you not read the chapter on elementary Transformation?” Hecate asks sharply, her patience wearing thin. She’d taken a cottage school Spell Science text and magicked it to read itself aloud when Mildred ran her finger over the words. The spell had taken a good deal of invention on Hecate’s part, and Mildred had seemed so pleased by it at the time…

But she’d apparently neglected her studies all the same.

“I did read it!” Mildred protests, crossing her arms.

“Then explain to me why you cannot manage even this simple task!” Hecate demands. “Any six-year-old child might have done it already!”

Mildred looks up at her, startled. Her eyes fill with tears. She fixes Hecate with an angry look. “I don’t _know_! I’m _trying_!”

She leans forward on her elbows, peers intently down at the beetle, and recites again:

_Eye of toad, _

_Leg of mutton,_

_Turn this beetle,_

_Into a button!_

There’s a small flash of light—but the beetle remains intact.

Hecate presses her lips together.

“I said it exactly like the book!” Mildred insists.

“You’re not meant to be _saying _anything!” Hecate growls. “You’re meant to be _incanting!_”

“What’s the _difference_?” Mildred yells back, throwing herself backward into her chair with such force that it squeaks against the floor. Morgana jumps away with a yowl.

“If you haven’t managed to understand that—“ Hecate says, rising to her feet, “—in the nearly two months we’ve spent here, then I’m afraid there’s very little hope for you at all!”

Mildred stands up too, nearly knocking her empty cup to the floor. “Fine! I don’t want to do it anymore, anyway! I never did!”

She runs out of the room and out the front door before Hecate can move to stop her.

Hecate stares after her for a long moment before sinking back into her seat and burying her face in her hands.

**

Julie approaches Hecate the next day as the dining hall empties after breakfast.

Hecate attempts to duck into the next corridor, but a group of laughing girls walk by, blocking her way.

Footsteps echo down the side stairs as the girls make their way to class.

“Did you finish the Botany homework?” somebody asks. “Only, Bertie’s spewed a hairball on mine.”

“Oi! Immie! We’ve just eaten breakfast!”

The voices fade. Hecate’s hands shake.

“Hecate…” Julie says. “What happened?” Her voice seems overloud in the sudden stillness of the corridor.

Hecate keeps her back to Julie, afraid what she might see if she turns around. She taps her fingers against her timepiece, trying to keep her shoulders from tensing noticeably.

“Mildred was…very upset, yesterday.” Julie says, finally. “And I think…” She sighs. “I think it might be a good idea to take a break from magic lessons for a while.”

A heavy weight forms in Hecate’s chest. She finds it hard to draw breath around it.

“Hecate…“

“You’re right,” Hecate says, willing her voice steady. “It would be best.”

She makes to walk away.

“Hecate, don’t—“

“I’ll be late for class.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> We're getting into final projects/exams at school now, so while I still plan on putting chapters up on Sundays, things might be a little late coming for the next few weeks.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in the end notes.

It storms the last weekend of October. Thick sheets of rain pound down on the roof tiles, washing in curtains over the castle’s long windows so that the sky outside is a grey blur.

Hecate spends Saturday afternoon alone for the first time in nearly three months. Any gratification she might have felt at finally being able to devote several hours to pickling phoenix gizzard is dampened by the persistent memory of how despicable she had been to Mildred at their last meeting. She cannot seem to get the image of the girl’s tear-filled eyes out of her head. As a result, she accomplishes very little and ends the afternoon wrung-out, irritable, and smelling distinctly of pickling liquid.

In the evening, Hecate misses dinner to help Miss Mayweather strengthen the spells on the leaking roof in the southwest tower. The task takes nearly an hour, and by the end of it Hecate smells of damp as well as of pickled gizzard.

They descend the stairs afterward to find a small crowd gathered in the entrance hall.

Hecate had forgotten the first guest lecturer was to arrive this week. Frowning, she glances up at the high windows and sees the rain still lashing against the glass. She wonders what sort of fool would choose to fly here in such weather, rather than delaying until tomorrow.

Then someone shifts, parting the crowd encircling the doorway—

And Hecate’s heart stops.

“Hecate? Are you alright?” Miss Mayweather’s voice comes from behind her, and Hecate vaguely registers she’s blocking the stairs.

Her ears ring.

It can’t be…

It _can’t _be…

“Ah, Hecate! Good!” Ada calls across the hall. “I don’t believe you’ve met our guest for the week—Miss Pippa Pentangle, head of Pentangle’s Academy.”

Pippa turns toward her.

Hecate feels herself falling through the floor. She grips the end of the banister for support.

Pippa’s hair is wet, curling at the ends where it falls over the shoulders of her rain-soaked cloak. She holds a pink felted hat in one hand, a heather-sprigged broomstick in the other.

Her brown eyes fall calmly on Hecate’s. The edges of her mouth pull up into a thin, polite smile.

“Hecate and I knew each other at school,” she says, her voice hitting Hecate square in the chest.

“Oh! Did you?” Ada asks, her eyes widening in pleasant surprise. “How wonderful!”

Pippa’s eyes don’t leave Hecate’s.

Hecate struggles to remember how to breathe.

Then, clapping her hands, Ada sends the girls back to the dining hall. Miss Gossamer emerges from the crowd and links arms with Pippa, chatting amicably and leading her away toward the northwest stairwell.

“Hecate?”

Hecate starts. She looks around to see Miss Mayweather eyeing her strangely, still trapped behind Hecate on the stairs.

“Are you quite alright?” Miss Mayweather asks, her eyebrows knitting together in concern.

“I—fine.” Hecate manages, moving abruptly out of the way to let Miss Mayweather pass.

She stands there, alone, for a long time after.

The fire crackles in the hearth across the hall.

The door to the dining hall opens, closes again, spilling laughter and chatter and light out onto the flagstones.

Hecate gasps, twists her hand, and transfers to her rooms.

In the dark, she falls back against the door, her fingers gripping at the varnished wood as she struggles to anchor herself against the blinding storm in her head.

_Pippa._

She slides down to the floor, stars popping in her vision.

She tries and tries and tries to calm the horrible crushing feeling in her chest, the ringing in her ears, the panic that hums under her skin like static…

She feels a soft weight climb over her knees and into her lap.

Morgana presses her head against Hecate’s hand until she begins stroking her.

Eventually, the feel of the cat’s warm body and soft fur brings Hecate back to herself. But only just.

**

On Monday, Pippa gives a speech at assembly introducing herself to the students and staff.

Hecate, who had spent the whole of Sunday ruthlessly scrubbing at any residual stain of emotion, manages to keep her composure throughout and even elects to send a stony nod in Pippa’s direction as proof of her indifference.

It is announced that Pippa will give hour-long lectures on modern witching pedagogy to the staff in the evenings after dinner.

Unfortunately, this means that she is free during the day to roam about the castle, observing lessons and attending meetings as she sees fit.

Apparently, she had seen fit to spend nearly all of Monday in the Ordinary Culture classroom.

“…she was telling me about the time she took a train to London, to attend some conference or other. She didn’t understand about the platforms, she said, and so she—well, it’s funnier if she tells it,” Julie is saying to Miss Drill in the staff room that afternoon. “And she said she doesn’t know why people are so resistant to learning about Ordinary things when so many magical people interact with them on a daily basis—whether they realize it or not.” Julie sips her tea. “You know, they’ve had what she calls ‘Ordinary Studies’ classes at her school for ages. She had me give her my mirror chant so she could pass it on to her Ordinary Studies teacher. Her father—the Ordinary Studies teacher’s father, that is—was Ordinary, though the teacher is a witch herself. Anyway, Miss Pentangle says she thinks there might be some interesting conversations to be had.”

“I’m glad,” Miss Drill says firmly. “It’s about damn time.”

“Quite right.”

Miss Drill takes a bite of her biscuit, shifting her feet on the footstool in front of her. “She’s the sweetest person, isn’t she? I mean, I don’t really say that about people. But she is.”

Julie hums her assent around the rim of her teacup, taking a long sip before setting it on the table by her elbow. “She really is that.”

Across the room, Hecate grips her quill so hard she snaps it in two.

**

All that week, Hecate waits—and tells herself she is certainly _not _waiting—for Pippa to make an appearance in the Potions classroom.

She spends her lessons in a state of distraction, her ears trained on the door, jumping at any sound that might be Pippa’s footsteps in the corridor or Pippa’s hand on the doorknob or Pippa’s voice asking Hecate if she wouldn’t mind the intrusion.

But Pippa never comes.

At meals, Hecate situates herself as far from Pippa as the staff table allows—a difficult task, given that she is also attempting to avoid proximity to either Mildred or Julie, to whom she has not spoken for the better part of two weeks. She ends up wedged between Miss Bat and Miss Mayweather, who spend mealtimes picking up and putting down what seems to be a well-worn argument concerning the merits of their respective casting styles—now with the occasional, “Well, Miss Pentangle says…“ thrown in for good measure.

Indeed, Pippa’s nightly lectures seem to have infused the staff with a new sense of entitlement towards their own opinions—in some cases because Pippa had mentioned something complimentary of a previously-held view, and in others because Pippa’s ideas about _modern magic_ had driven them to defensive posturing. Arguments crop up in the corridors, at meals, and in all corners of the staff room, some devolving into nastiness the school had not seen since the late nineties, when Miss Tapioca had taken to serving only boiled tripe at every meal for three weeks in response to an offhand comment Mister Rowan Webb had made about underdone potatoes.

Hecate herself avoids these disputes as thoroughly as possible. In the lectures themselves, she sips at lukewarm tea and keeps quiet, even when Pippa says things Hecate feels sure are meant specifically to bait her into argument—though that could not possibly have been the case.

For Pippa has barely so much as looked at Hecate the entire week.

**

Late one afternoon, Pippa breezes into the staffroom looking windswept, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked with laughter.

Hecate ducks her head, concentrating desperately on her copy of _Bewitch and Beguile: The Emergence of Mind-Control Potions in the Late Fourteenth Century, _which she is set to review for _The Cauldron _next month.

“That was wonderful,” Pippa says breathlessly to Miss Drill, who has followed her into the room. “I haven’t flown like that in years!”

“Glad you could join us,” Miss Drill says as they hang up their cloaks and place their brooms on stands near the door. “The girls sure learned a thing or two, watching you.”

“Oh, I don’t know…I’m really very out of practice.”

“Oh, please. You could loop-de-loop in your sleep!”

“Well…”

“We’ll have to fly together sometime, before you leave,” Miss Drill says, pouring herself a cup of tea. “It would be nice to have someone who could really keep up.”

Hecate clenches her jaw so hard her teeth ache. The words swim on the page.

“Miss Pentangle?”

“Oh!” Pippa says suddenly, as if she’d been distracted by something. “Yes. Absolutely. That would be lovely, Dimity, thank you.”

“Right then! You’re on.”

Hecate slams her book closed and stalks out of the room.

“What’s eating _her_ hat?” she hears Miss Drill mutter, just before the door slams shut behind her.

**

Fearful she’d given too much of herself away by walking out in such a fashion, Hecate determines to make a particular effort at indifference the rest of the week. She sits next to Pippa at breakfast the next morning and asks after her night’s sleep, comments on the weather, and passes her the marmalade, all the while taking vindictive pleasure in ignoring the ill-concealed look of shock on Pippa’s face. That night, she brings _Bewitch and Beguile _to the lecture and holds it ostentatiously in front of her face for the duration of Pippa’s talk, only raising her eyes from the page to address the occasional scathing aside to nobody in particular. She feels a distinct sense of triumph at the rising frustration in Pippa’s eyes.

That sense of triumph is diminished somewhat when she enters her classroom the next morning to find Pippa already there, sitting on the edge of Hecate’s desk and talking animatedly to the small group of second-year girls who have arrived early for their lesson.

Hecate stands gaping in the doorway for entirely too long before managing at last to regain her composure.

She walks directly up to Pippa’s side and glares imperiously down at her.

Pippa shows no sign that she has registered Hecate’s presence. Instead, she continues talking to Flora Trellis—who most certainly _has_ registered Hecate’s presence and is looking between the two teachers with visible trepidation.

“You are sitting,” Hecate grinds out, finally, “on my desk.”

Pippa glances up at Hecate with affected surprise. “Oh! Am I?” She stands daintily. “So sorry.”

Hecate narrows her eyes. Pippa holds her gaze.

The crow calls for the start of class. Several girls scurry through the classroom door, seconds late.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” Pippa says pleasantly, after what seems like a very long while.

Hecate blinks. She darts a glance around the classroom. The girls are standing silently at their worktables, staring down at the pair of them.

Hecate’s cheeks heat.

Stiffly, she sets the girls about making their disguise potions, conscious to the point of pain of Pippa’s presence behind her.

Hecate makes her habitual rounds during the brewing process, observing the girls’ work and offering criticism—though the latter is made difficult by the fact that she is continuously looking up and finding Pippa watching her, which unsettles her into forgetting her thoughts halfway through saying them.

Unlike Miss Hallow had last year, Pippa does not take notes, does not smile, does not do much of anything except follow Hecate around the room with her eyes, expression inscrutable. She leaves immediately as the crow calls, disappearing into the change-of-class crowds.

Hecate hears the girls talking as they pack up their things.

“That was the weirdest potions class ever!” Amandine Praline whispers, stuffing her Potions text and class notes haphazardly into her rucksack. “The _weirdest._ And that’s counting the one I spent as a woodlouse.”

“Did you see Miss Pentangle? She looked like she was trying to burn holes straight through HB’s head!”

“And when HB saw her sitting on the desk! I thought she was going to murder her right there in front of us!”

“What was that all about, d’you think?”

“Dunno. Guess they hate each other.”

The classroom empties. Hecate slams the door shut behind them and does not open it again until thirty seconds before the start of the next class.

Pippa does not return.

**

The staffroom is particularly crowded that Friday evening. Many of the teachers are attempting to complete their marking ahead of the Halloween celebration that weekend; nearly every flat surface in the room has been taken over by stacks of parchment and bottles of red ink.

The atmosphere, Hecate feels, is not particularly conducive to efficiency. Rather than seeing to their work in silence, everyone seems to be splitting their attention between reading assignments and talking loudly to each other. Misses Gossamer and Mayweather sit together in one corner, heads bent together, sharing a stale-looking finger sandwich and laughing over something one of Miss Mayweather’s students had written. Miss Drill, Mister Rowan Webb, and Julie sit around a table while Julie gesticulates wildly with her Ordinary red pen, telling a story that makes Mister Rowan Webb open his mouth in surprise. Miss Bat sits under the windows, despairing to the room at large that her students never seemed to be able to grasp the difference between iambic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter, which was evidenced by their apparently very poor compositions that week.

The noise grates against Hecate’s nerves. Irritably, she throws down her quill and walks to the side to pour herself some tea.

This turns out to be a very poor decision. Not ten feet behind her, half-hidden behind an overstuffed armchair, Pippa is sitting on the rug in front of the fire, talking softly with Mildred.

Hecate abruptly busies herself selecting a cup from the wooden hooks over the tea spread, hoping the chair will be enough to block her from their view.

Unfortunately, it does not stop their words drifting over to her.

“And what’s your favourite thing to do there?” Pippa is asking.

“Art. I like history too, but art is my best subject.”

“Really? You like to draw?”

“And paint. And next year we get to do clay.”

“How exciting!”

They fall silent for a moment. Hecate places a strainer over her cup and pours the tea.

“Your mum tells me you have magic,” Pippa says gently.

“Yeah, I do, but…” Mildred sighs. “I’m not any good at it.”

“Oh, I’m sure that isn’t true!” Pippa insists.

“It _is_ true. Miss Hardbroom thinks so.”

Hecate nearly drops the teapot.

“She does, does she?” Pippa’s voice sounds dangerous.

“Yes,” Mildred mumbles.

“Right,” Pippa says. “Well, Miss Hardbroom can be…” She trails off. “Never mind.”

Absently, Hecate spoons sugar into her cup, a horrid empty feeling gnawing at her stomach.

“Maybe,” Mildred begins carefully. “…maybe I’m not a real witch. Maybe it’s a mistake.”

“Of course you’re a real witch!” Pippa protests. “Do you know, I have three students from Ordinary families at my school? And each of them is every bit as magical as all the rest.”

“Really?”

“_Really._ And I bet you are much better with your magic than you think. Sometimes it’s just a matter of looking at things differently—and then suddenly everything just _clicks._”

“Miss Hardbroom said…Miss Hardbroom said I had to learn to control my magic, or I could hurt people.”

Hecate stirs her tea with shaking hands, a bit of the liquid sloshing over her fingers.

“I see,” Pippa says, her voice carefully controlled. “And what else did Miss Hardbroom say?”

“She told me about how there are things that pull at us, sort of like gravity. And how the pulling things let us use magic, but they can also pull us apart if we don’t control them properly, so we have to be careful.” Mildred sighs. “And I was supposed to learn how to move a marble, and turn a beetle into a button. But I can’t do it. I say all the words and I try to feel things pulling, but it never works.”

“I see,” Pippa says again. “Well…Miss Hardbroom was right about the things that pull at us. Things like the moon and the Earth’s magnetic poles and the changing of the seasons—they give us the energy we need for our magic, and if we work with it, we can do great things.” Pippa pauses. “And it is true: their pull can be strong. But you know the thing about gravity, Mildred? At the same time that the moon and the stars and all the planets are pulling at us, we’re pulling right back at them, with our own gravity.”

“We are?” Mildred asks, her voice all wonderment.

“We really are,” Pippa answers. “Everything in the universe pulls at everything else, and witches are no less a part of that than stars or planets. It is all—everything—in perfect balance. Nothing too big or too small. And you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think it is less important that you worry about controlling your magic, than it is for you to try and understand how it is that you have a place in the world—in all of that connectedness. A place just your own, where you fit just right. Do you see what I mean?”

“…sort of? I think so. Maybe.”

“And, you know, while it is true that we can use our magic by working with the pull of everything around us, it is also true that we can learn to make our own pull—that we can learn to use our own gravity, of sorts—to make magic in our own way.”

“How?”

“Well,” Pippa says, “I always tell my students, _magic is connected to the truest parts of yourself_. And so, if you can reach those places, you can use the energy stored there.”

Mildred hesitates. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s alright,” Pippa says. “It’s a bit of a complicated idea. It’s usually easiest to begin by thinking of moments in your life when you’ve felt particularly strongly about something. Or someone. And whatever you’re feeling in that moment, you can use that feeling—that pull—to feed your magic. Just like you would with the moon or the seasons.” There is a rustling of fabric. “Would you like to see?”

Slowly, as though drawn by a spell, Hecate turns around to see Pippa raising her hand, spreading her fingers outward.

Pippa closes her eyes, whispering words that Hecate can’t hear.

The lamps on either side of the couch begin to glow, light welling and welling and finally spilling over. Incandescent rivers trace through the air, curling in bright ribbons above Mildred’s head, pulsing like firelight come alive.

Pippa opens her eyes. The light brushes a brilliant glow across her cheeks, dances like gold in the brown of her eyes, and for a moment she looks as if she could disappear into it.

Then she twists her hand, and the ribbons fade away as if blown by a breeze.

Hecate’s heart feels as if it will beat out of her chest.

“_Whoa_,” Mildred breathes, staring first at the now-empty space over her head, and then at Pippa’s face. “Can _I_ do that?”

Pippa laughs. “Well, it usually takes our students three or four years of basic practice before they have the skills to begin working on this sort of thing—so I’m afraid you may have to wait a while. But, yes.” She smiles warmly down at the girl. “You can.”

Mildred considers this. She tilts her head. “What were you thinking about?”

“To cast the spell just now?”

Mildred nods.

“I was thinking about flying.”

**

Hecate tries to think of a way to unobtrusively miss the Halloween celebration.

Unfortunately, as Deputy Head, she is meant to be directing a part of the firelight ceremony.

And so she sits resignedly through the Halloween feast, once more ensconced between Miss Bat and Miss Mayweather, hardly aware of the festive banners or the roast dinner or the flickering light of the paper lanterns floating overhead.

Afterward, the school assemble in the courtyard, dressed in cloaks and joining hands around a stone dais, where the decorating committee have carefully arranged a mountain of logs.

The autumn chill makes the night air taste crisp and cool; a sharp breeze cuts through the gathered crowd, ruffling the hems of cloaks and blowing dried leaves across the brittle grass. In the moonlight, the breath of a hundred witches drifts like mist.

Hecate directs the girls in a chant that sets the runes carved into the dais briefly aglow. Taking a leather pouch from the pocket of her dress, she sprinkles fire fern powder across the logs. Thus fortified, the ceremonial fire will burn through the night and into the morning, even through heavy wind and rain.

Preparations complete, the first years begin squabbling amongst each other about the order of their births, three of them nearly coming to blows. Quite at the end of her patience, Hecate whirls around to reprimand them, when Geraldine Bluebell calls out from the fifth-year ranks.

“Mildred should do it!”

Mildred, stood with the staff at the front of the crowd, looks startled. Her ridiculous Ordinary cape—a sheer, flimsy thing made to look like interwoven cobwebs—flutters awkwardly about her shoulders.

“Yeah, Mildred should do it!” Addie Coppercauldron adds.

The rest of the girls break out in murmurs.

“Do what?” Hecate hears Mildred ask her mother.

Hecate makes to answer.

But then Pippa steps forward and crouches down in front of the girl, her bright magenta cloak pooling on the grass around her.

“They want you to light the fire,” Pippa says, smiling gently.

“Me?” Mildred asks, wide-eyed. She glances between Pippa and the mountain of logs, the light of the moon making her face look small and pale.

Pippa nods. “Traditionally, it’s a task for the youngest witch present. And that’s you, my dear.”

Mildred searches Pippa’s face, confusion melting away into something much younger. She shakes her head. “I don’t know how,” she whispers.

“I’ll help you,” Pippa says, taking a small branch from Ada, who had come to stand beside Mildred. Hecate struggles against the bite of something like jealousy.

Mildred holds the branch where Pippa directs her, looking apprehensive.

“Ready?”

Mildred bites her lip. She nods.

“Alright, I’m going to hold your other hand, to help you direct your magic,” Pippa says, “and we’re going to gather the energy for the spell. Deep breath.”

Mildred sucks in a great gulp of air.

Pippa visibly smothers a laugh. “Good. Excellent. And now, Mildred, I want you to close your eyes—that’s it—and think about what we all look like, standing together under the moon. Think about what it feels like when the days grow shorter, and the air gets crisp like fresh apples, and the leaves turn golden on the trees—can you picture it: how summer turns to autumn?” She asks. Mildred nods, her cheeks still puffed out with air. “And then think about what we talked about before: about gravity, and all of these things that pull at you, at all of us, and we at them, everything connected together. I want you to think about yourself, at the centre of all this, as one of many things in the universe. Can you do that?”

Letting her breath out with a great gasp, Mildred nods again, her eyes screwed shut.

“Very good. Now, keep thinking and repeat after me—“

And Pippa says the words to call forth fire, Mildred stumbling determinedly along after her.

Hecate wants to step forward, wants to snatch the branch from their hands, wants to ask Pippa what on earth she is thinking of. Mildred’s magic is uncontrolled—explosive or absent, and nothing in between. She could seriously injure herself, seriously injure Pippa—

The branch remains unlit.

Mildred opens her eyes, her face falling. Her auburn hair whips messily against her cheeks. “I did it wrong again, didn’t I?”

“No, no, darling,” Pippa says, touching a gloved hand to Mildred’s face, smoothing back her hair. Hecate can’t breathe. “You did just right. But this time, I want you to think less about the words, and more about how you feel saying them.” She hums thoughtfully. “Do you understand what I mean when I say that what you _mean—_you yourself, standing here with all of us, thinking about the shortened days and the connections we all have, the magic we share—that what you _mean _is more important than what you do or say?”

Mildred’s mouth drops open. She glances briefly at Hecate, who feels a painful jolt in her chest.

“Like a metaphor,” Mildred says, her voice clearer than before. Her eyes are on Pippa once more.

Pippa’s face lights up. “Yes! _Exactly _like a metaphor. You clever thing. Exactly like that.”

Mildred beams, and Hecate aches with it.

“Want to try again?”

Mildred nods and clasps her hands more firmly around the branch.

They say the words again, their voices rising and falling together through the heartbeat rhythms.

The branch bursts into flames.

Hecate starts.

Mildred is so surprised she nearly drops the branch on the ground.

Pippa laughs. “Careful,” she says, steadying the girl.

She helps Mildred walk over to the mountain of logs. With a glance around at all the expectant faces standing in circles around her, Mildred bites her lip, extends the branch, and sets the logs aflame.

The girls burst into cheers, the staff applauding loudly alongside.

“Go Millie!” Imogen Treewitch yells, cupping her hands around her mouth. Several of the other girls join in.

Mildred, flushed and happy, skips back to Julie, who lifts her up and spins her around.

“Well done, you! Well done!” Julie says, laughing, her odd felted owl mask falling askew.

“Did you see? I did it, Mum!” Mildred grins, her arms around Julie’s neck. “Did you see that? I did it! I really did magic!”

Hecate doesn’t know why she feels as if she could cry.

**

Pippa leaves the day after Halloween, just after the ceremonial fire is extinguished by Miss Bat. She waves to the gathered girls, hugs some of the staff, and tells Ada what a real pleasure it had been to visit her school.

She does not once look at Hecate.

Hecate spends the rest of term feeling half awake, like she’s suspended in the few sickly seconds after waking from a nightmare, unable to convince herself of the reality of the world—or, indeed, even to remember that there _is _a world outside her own head.

At the end of November, in the brief lull before the term winds up into exams, another guest lecturer arrives—a nondescript wizard from Wildwood who speaks on the importance of integrating botany more fully into other areas of magical studies. Misses Mayweather and Gossamer seem particularly taken with him. Miss Bat declares him an old windbag. Hecate pays him no mind at all, though he attempts several times to engage her in conversation about her recent review of _Bewitch and Beguile, _which had apparently held much interest for him.

December feels like a single long day. The grey weather seems to creep into Hecate’s bones. She doesn’t sleep, and even Miss Drill comments concernedly about the circles under Hecate’s eyes.

At the staff Yule party, Hecate sits in a dim corner and watches the snow fall past the long windows. The weather witch had called for nearly eight inches; already, the school grounds are blanketed in white.

She loses track of time, loses track of her thoughts in the wash of cheerful voices around her. When she comes back to herself, Mister Rowan Webb is extinguishing the lamps along the walls. Most of the staff have left. The room is quiet.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up. Mister Rowan Webb is watching her from across the room.

“Do you think you’ll be here much longer?” he asks. “I can leave a lamp on for you.”

“No,” Hecate says, clearing her throat. “Thank you.”

Mister Rowan Webb frowns softly. “If you’re sure…”

“I am.”

“Well. Have a good holiday, then. See you next term.”

Hecate nods stiffly at him. He returns the gesture before extinguishing the last lamp and heading out the door.

The fire crackles low in the grate, now the only source of light in the room.

The door opens again.

Julie crosses the room, the firelight catching in her hair and throwing the planes of her face into long shadow.

She rummages through the cushions on the couch and emerges with a bundle—the thick red scarf Miss Bat had made for Mildred as a Yule gift. The girl must have left it behind.

Julie stands. Her eyes meet Hecate’s.

Hecate freezes.

After a tense moment, Julie walks to Hecate’s corner and settles herself wordlessly in the chair opposite, the scarf bunching in her lap.

“Hello,” she says, the calm of her tone belied by the steel in her eyes.

Hecate flinches, averting her gaze.

“We’ve missed you, these last few months.”

Hecate raises her head, startled. “_Why_?” she hears herself ask. She’d not had any wine tonight, and yet her head feels slow and muzzy.

Julie sighs heavily, muttering to herself. “Because,” she says, irritation creeping into her voice, “if you’d believe it, we actually enjoy your company.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Yes, well, good job that isn’t up to you.”

Hecate gapes.

Julie holds her gaze challengingly.

Hecate swallows. “I--I _hurt_ her. Mildred. I said…I should never have said what I said.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Then what are you_ doing _here?” Hecate demands painfully, gripping at the edges of the armchair. “I—I hurt your child! You should be—“

“I should be what? Arresting you for crimes against humanity?” Julie snaps, staring at her. “Hecate, it’s not--you’re not your bloody father!” She shakes her head, brow wrinkling. “Is that why you’ve been acting so…so _dire _about this?”

Hecate stills.

She’d never realized—not until this very moment—

A horrible, sick heat spreads like ice under her skin.

She’d made Mildred _afraid._

She’d _wanted _to make Mildred afraid—

She’d—

“So you were frustrated. So you shouted,” Julie says, agitated. “Of course I wish you hadn’t! _Of course_ I do.” She throws up her hands, her silver bell earrings jingling. “But I wish more that you had just come and apologized. I wish _more_ that you hadn’t stopped talking to us altogether—for three months, Hecate!” She sighs, rubbing her forehead. “If it were only me, I could stand it. But Mildred’s just a little girl! She doesn’t know what’s going through your head!” Julie fixes her with a withering look. “She’s spent the last few months thinking you’re disappointed in her. Thinking you’re so disappointed in her you don’t even want to see her anymore!”

Hecate draws in a sharp breath, her eyes stinging.

Julie covers her face with her hands.

“Just fix it, would you,” she mutters after a moment, her words muffled. She brings her hands back down. “Just…pull yourself together and fix it.”

She gets up from the chair and walks away across the room.

In the doorway, she pauses with her hand on the latch.

“Of course you’re not your father,” she says, without turning around.

The door falls shut behind her.

Hecate sits alone for a long while after that. When the fire dies, she rouses herself and transfers to her rooms.

She doesn’t sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [cw: description of a panic episode]
> 
> Thanks for reading--and thank you for all of your lovely comments! Exams are nearly finished now, and so hopefully I'll have some time to reply to them later this week.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Hecate rises in the half-dark. She spends the morning at her writing desk, penning letter after letter while Morgana sleeps by the kitchen fire.

Each one she vanishes after only a few lines.

Finally, ink-stained and frustrated to the point of incoherence, she changes her aim.

_Dear Miss Mayweather, _she writes,

_If you would be so kind as to send along copies of any notes you might have taken during Miss Pentangle’s lectures, I would be much obliged._

_Cordially,_

_Hecate Hardbroom_

She folds the letter and magicks it away before she can think the better of it.

She spends the afternoon trying and failing to keep her mind occupied with the latest issue of _The Cauldron. _But all she can think of is whether she had phrased her request clearly, whether she ought to have opened her letter with _Happy Yule _ or _I hope you are well, _what Miss Mayweather would think of her asking after Pippa’s lectures, whether Miss Mayweather would have time to read her letter given she was away visiting family, whether she would think Hecate rude to have sent her a letter when Hecate had _known _she was visiting family, whether she would reply in the negative, whether she would reply at all.

A letter pops into existence at Hecate’s elbow while she toasts bread for dinner.

_Dear Hecate,_

_I have copied my notes, and Fiona’s as well. I hope you find them useful._

_Happy Yule._

_Warm regards,_

_June Mayweather_

Not two seconds after Hecate’s finished reading, a stack of parchment appears on the kitchen table, the accompanying _pop! _startling Morgana into a blind dash under the settee.

Looking between the letter and the parchment, Hecate feels a faint sort of warmth in her chest, though she tamps it down quickly.

She walks to the table and unties the string around the copied notes.

_The Marvels of Modern Magic—Lectures by Miss Pippa Pentangle, Pentangle’s Academy _is written across the top of the first page in Miss Mayweather’s dainty hand.

Her toast finished, Hecate settles down to read.

**

The day after Yule, Hecate flies some twenty miles to Idlewild, the small magical village near Wildwood Witching Academy.

The winds whip her cloak around her as she walks through the narrow cobbled streets, dodging harried shoppers in new fur stoles and pink-cheeked children clamouring for fondant fancies from the brightly-lit sweets shop on the corner. An old man sits on a stool outside a tobacconist’s, playing something festive on the viol while passers-by toss coins into a small cauldron at his feet.

Hecate takes a folded piece of parchment from her pocket, checking it against the creaking sign above the door of a cramped-looking shop.

_Bronwyn’s Books:_

_Ancient Tomes – Spellbooks – Rare Finds – Modern Magic_

Hecate has the absurd notion that she should hide her face before entering.

“Hello!” calls a bright voice as Hecate pushes the door open, a bell tinkling overhead. “Welcome to Bronwyn’s Books! Can I help you find anything?”

Hecate, whose ears are aching from the sudden warmth of the shop, shakes her head.

“Alright—let me know!” The curly-haired witch behind the till goes back to sorting through a stack of leather-bound books.

The shop smells of leather and pine. Hecate removes her gloves and begins wandering the aisles. The shelves are hopelessly crowded; twice she nearly trips over wooden crates of books left at the ends of rows. _I belong in the witching history section! _claims a note stuck to one.

She walks up and back, up and back again, scowl growing deeper as she fails to locate what she’d come for.

“Are you sure I can’t help you?” the shop witch asks, startling Hecate. Her voice comes out strained; she’s attempting to squeeze one of the leather-bound books into place on the shelf opposite. When she finally manages it, she sighs, dusts her hands, and walks solicitously up to Hecate.

“What are you looking for?”

Hecate presses her lips together before relenting. She glances down at the list in her hand. “_The New Elementary Spellcasting, _by Millicent Herringbone and…_Fundamentals of Modern Magical Practice _by Pippa Pentangle,” she says, rushing through the last as though the shop witch might sense something from the way it sounds in Hecate’s mouth.

“Both excellent reads!” the shop witch says, smiling. “Have you got a first-year student at home?”

Hecate blinks. “No.”

“Oh, I just thought you might have. Loads of mothers come in around this time of year—the winter hols, you know—wondering what their kid is on about, wanting to know more on modern magic.” She tilts her head. “You’d think they might have read up on it before sending a child to school at Wildwood. Still, I suppose it _is _a new way of doing things. And we’re one of the only places in the country to teach it. Us and Pentangle’s.”

“Quite,” Hecate says.

The shop witch smiles. “It’s this way.”

**

The Hubbles are gone to Lancashire, and Ada to Yorkshire and her cousin Rose’s, and Hecate is quite alone in the castle.

She reads most of every day.

She begins with _The New Elementary Spellcasting, _which had been suggested in Miss Mayweather’s notes. It is the first- and second-year text used at Pentangle’s, and is written with a commanding simplicity that makes the information easy enough to parse—though this does not stop Hecate scoffing when she comes across what seems to her a particularly _new-fangled _passage.

She keeps careful notes, using spells to bind certain lines of writing to the associated sections of the text and of Miss Mayweather’s lecture notes so that references might be made with the snap of a finger. She ends her evenings ink-stained and with a growing headache behind her eyes, and once even falls asleep with a book open across her chest. The whole affair is reminiscent of her years at university; Hecate cannot decide whether the reminder is altogether positive.

She spends perhaps too much time reading and rereading the first book, if only to delay the inevitable. Finally, in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, Hecate tells herself in the strongest terms to stop being silly, makes herself a cup of strong tea, and pulls the second book from its brown paper wrapping.

_Fundamentals of Modern Magical Practice _had been published nearly ten years ago. Helplessly, Hecate does the maths in her head; Pippa would have been thirty-seven.

Scouring the thought from her mind, Hecate opens the book and forces herself to read.

Pippa writes like she speaks: clear and gentle.

Kind.

Hecate closes the book again after five minutes, an ache in her chest so strong it makes her breathless.

She closes her eyes.

Then she curses herself for a fool, rewarms her tea, thinks of Mildred, and begins again.

**

Hecate discovers that, while it had seemed otherwise to her at the time, what Pippa had done with Mildred the night of the firelight ceremony had not in fact been modern magic itself, but rather an exercise in modern magical pedagogy—a distinction which Pippa is careful to make in the early chapters of her book.

_… It is important to note that the spellwork taught in foundational years is largely ‘traditional’ magic. It is solely the method of casting that makes this approach ‘modern.’_

_In the first years of instruction, students learn to draw upon extrinsic magical energies by constructing ‘image-stories’: a series of mental pictures that help the student to more deliberately invoke the energies necessary for a particular spell. This casting technique takes time to perfect and may appear cumbersome to those who were taught using conventional approaches. However, we find the rewards are well worth the effort._

_Once a student has cultivated the ability to draw upon extrinsic magical energies through conscious effort, it then becomes possible to teach that student to draw upon the well of energy within themselves. This intrinsic magical energy, fed by strong memory and emotion, can be used to supplement traditional spellwork and may eventually be drawn upon as the sole energy source for a spell, allowing even Nominal and Vital magicks to be cast out-of-context and without the use of augments. Intrinsic magic—also referred to as ‘emotive’ magic—is at the core of what we call ‘modern’ magical practice…_

Hecate has read enough to understand that all Pippa had done on Halloween was help Mildred draw upon the appropriate energies for the firelight spell. She had not been reckless with Mildred’s safety or her own; she had not attempted to make the girl use emotive magic—a magic, by all accounts, well beyond the girl’s present ability.

No. By guiding her through the creation of one of these so-called ‘image-stories,’ by helping the girl focus her thoughts and calm her mind, Pippa had simply aided Mildred in gathering the energies she needed—and, perhaps more importantly, had given her the necessary confidence to cast the spell successfully.

Tasks which Hecate had desperately failed.

She wonders—she finds herself wondering, over and over, as she reads—if unkindness, if fear, if _control_ were so much a part of her teaching that there was nothing left without it.

It was all they had given her.

And she hadn’t thought twice before turning it on Mildred—before turning it on Mildred _thinking it a kindness. _A _necessity._

She thinks of Pippa—she _lets _herself think of Pippa—of her kind voice, telling Mildred she had a place in the universe of things, telling Mildred _of course _she was a real witch, telling Mildred she was clever and good and safe.

She thinks of Pippa, her small thin hand clutched tight in the dark, the school quiet all around them, saying _you shouldn’t be so afraid, you know. You’re brilliant._

Hecate buries her face in her hands.

She can’t do this.

She can’t do this.

She _can’t _do this.

But she must.

**

Hecate clenches her jaw, her head bent over the table.

A small crystal orb rests on a cushion in front of her. She’d pilfered it from one of the store cupboards in the east tower, where Cackle’s Fortune-Telling classroom had been housed before the Great Wizard Balderdash had outlawed fortune-telling in the sixteenth century.

The crystal was not to be used for gazing, however, but rather for some modern nonsense Hecate can barely believe she is entertaining.

A headache pulses behind her eyes. She cannot remember the last time she’s slept.

She peers irritably down at the orb, and then at the page of instructions in Pippa’s book.

She has already cast the Unbreakable spells. That, at least, was not outside her capability.

But this dratted Tell-All spell…

…_To help your students visualize the strength and tenor of the energies they wield, I suggest enchanting a standard crystal orb (a standard size five or seven should suit) with the following modified Tell-All spell. _

_The spell will enable the crystal to reflect magical energy in the form of coloured mist—or, alternatively, by the emission of differently-pitched tones. This arrangement can allow a student to practise gathering particular magical energies without having to release them; if used properly, it can prevent most mishaps common to developmental spellcasting…_

Gritting her teeth, Hecate casts the spell again.

The orb glows briefly—but the colour is grey rather than the bright blue described in the book.

Hecate does not pitch the orb across the room, but it is a close thing.

Despairing, and fatigued to the point of pain, she does precisely what she told herself she absolutely would not do.

With a finger on the text of the Tell-All spell, Hecate incants an indexing charm.

The pages of the book flip to an appendix.

_The Modified Tell-All Spell_

_To incant this modification of the Tell-All spell, it is usually necessary to call upon some or all of the following extrinsic energies:_

_Spring, new-life, waxing moon_

_It is also possible to incant this spell using emotive magic, though it must be directed carefully, as this particular spell has a tendency to run away with one’s feelings—_

Hecate scoffs, slamming the book closed.

What utter nonsense.

Scowling, she stands from the table and stalks over to the kitchen window.

December has faded to January; the sky is white and cold above the skeletal trees. The days hardly feel like days at all, but rather moments of weak light peeking through an endless dark.

Hecate sighs, a bitter sort of ache in her bones, the heat from the potbelly stove soaking through to her skin. She is tired to the point of pain, and yet cannot seem to fall asleep for more than spare minutes at a time.

She opens her eyes, not remembering she’d closed them.

The spellbook seems to stare at her from across the room.

Guilt pricks at her stomach; stiff-backed and reticent, she returns to her chair and opens it once more.

_Spring, new-life, waxing moon…_

Her eyes fall upon the bundles of dried herbs and flowers hanging from lengths of twine over her larder doorway. A picture forms in her mind of a wild cherry tree, cotton-pink with blossoms…

Hastily, before she can lose her grip on the image, Hecate turns back to the page of instructions and incants the spell.

The orb glows a bright blue.

She stares down at it—

—and is hit with a sudden wave of anger—at herself, at Pippa, at everyone and no one in particular—

She stands abruptly and paces the short length of her kitchen, tapping her fingers against her timepiece.

If it was necessary—if it was _best—_to make these things explicit to a beginning magical user, why had she never heard of anyone doing so before? The Cackle’s girls seemed to get on well enough without it.

Didn’t they?

Well—_didn’t they_?

Clenching her fists, Hecate stalks out of her rooms, the suddenness of her movements startling Morgana into a wary hiss.

Hardly knowing where she is going, Hecate walks the darkened corridors of the empty castle, mind racing, footsteps echoing eerily in the torch-lit shadows.

She tries to remember how the Cackle’s girls were taught Chanting—but can recall only Miss Bat fussing at them to sing more enthusiastically. What about Spell Science; surely in Spell Science the girls learned not only that they must invoke certain magical energies in their spells, but also _how_ to draw upon those energies in the process of their casting?

Or were they simply told to _practise, _and then to _practise harder. _Practise saying the words, without any guidance concerning the intentions they were meant to be putting behind them. Leaving it unspoken, leaving them to stumble upon it on their own.

_You’re not meant to be _saying_ anything! _she recalls herself shouting at Mildred, _You’re meant to be _incanting_!_

_What’s the difference?_ Mildred had shouted back.

Hecate closes her eyes.

_Again, you useless girl! _another voice screams, a voice from her memories. _Again, and again, and again, until you get this right!_

Her breathing shallows.

If it was so essential, why had nobody ever _told_ her? Why had _nobody_—_ever—_

She’s ended up in the southwest tower without meaning to.

The empty space rings with the sharpness of her breathing.

In one of the long windows, the winter sun is dying a faint golden death over the rooftops of the village.

_It is easier to feel lonely in familiar places, _Hecate remembers Mildred saying.

Hecate sits on the window ledge until the sky bruises into twilight, the familiar sting of old words aching under her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If you've never heard a viol (the instrument being played when Hecate visits Idlewild), it is a Renaissance string instrument that looks sort of like a smaller, six-stringed cello. They're really beautiful.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Hecate steps out into the frosty courtyard, a warming spell draped about the shoulders of her heavy winter cloak.

Her eyes follow a small figure as it moves through the sky overhead.

It is late January, and most of the teachers have returned to the castle to prepare for the coming term. At the staff welcome dinner the night before, all Mildred had talked of was the new broom she’d received for her birthday last week in Lancashire.

Hecate tucks her hands into the pockets of her cloak and watches her fly. The girl is not a natural. She sits awkwardly on the broom and grips the handle too tightly, making each turn into an overcorrection that sends her veering off course. Still, characteristically, what she lacks in grace, she seems to make up for in determination. She has been out flying nearly every waking moment since she’d returned to the castle four days ago, even as the temperatures grew bitterly cold.

Hecate can tell the moment Mildred spots her. A notable stiffness grips the girl’s shoulders; she aims the broom at the ground, coming in much too quickly for a clean landing. Heart in her throat, Hecate raises her hand to transfer Mildred off her broom before it can crash—but Mildred pulls up at the last second, and the broom comes to a screeching halt not three feet from the ground.

Mildred stumbles off it, chest heaving, tangled ponytail whipping in the wind.

“Miss Drill said I could.”

Hecate blinks. She’d grown unaccustomed to Mildred’s non-sequiturs over the past months of distance.

Mildred is staring up at her, cheeks cold-stung, earmuffs askew, a stubborn set to her jaw. “It’s my own broom, anyway,” she says, still breathless from flight. Her words cloud the air in front of her.

“I know that,” Hecate says, still lost. She had certainly heard this fact mentioned enough times at dinner last night not to have forgotten it by the following afternoon.

“I’m allowed to fly it. Miss Drill said I could. She said I was good enough to fly by myself now, as long as I stayed close to the castle and didn’t fly over any trees.”

“That is…sound advice,” Hecate manages.

Mildred grips her broom tightly in her mittened hands, the bristles bending slightly where they’re pressing against the frostbitten ground. Hecate grimaces involuntarily.

“You can’t take it away,” Mildred declares, and then widens her eyes as if surprised by her own daring.

Hecate’s eyes snap open. “I’m not—I’m not here to take your broom away,” she says, her heart sinking. Is this what the girl thinks of her?

Mildred frowns, tilting her head. “Then why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like—“ Mildred does a startlingly accurate impression of Hecate’s grimace.

Hecate’s cheeks warm a little. She clears her throat. “Because,” she says, with a grim look at Mildred’s broom, “you are currently in the process of ruining your brand new broomstick.”

“Oh,” Mildred says, looking chagrined. She holds the broomstick off the ground. The longest bristles are two inches deep in mud.

“That’s better,” Hecate says, mostly to say anything at all.

They fall into a strained silence.

“I’m—I—I had wanted to give you something,” Hecate forces out at last.

Mildred searches her face, as if she can’t quite discern Hecate’s meaning.

Steeling herself, Hecate pulls a square box from the pocket of her cloak. She holds it out to Mildred, her heart pounding painfully in her chest.

After a moment, Mildred takes it, her frayed red mittens bright against the brown paper wrapping.

“I thought you didn’t know when my birthday was,” she says quietly.

In point of fact, Hecate had not known. She’d not intended the gift for the occasion; it was simply a matter of coincidence.

She thinks about what Mildred had said to her a year ago, about saving gifts to give on special occasions so that one might remember them particularly.

She thinks perhaps she should apologize for—for what? For not knowing the date? For not thinking about it long enough to have wanted to know, to have asked after it?

Birthdays had never been a cause for particular celebration, in Hecate’s experience.

But this was Mildred.

“I put old batteries in the train, last year,” Mildred says, apparently thinking in the same vein. She’s looking somewhere past Hecate’s left elbow. “I thought when they ran out you’d come and see Mum again to get some more, and you’d start talking to her again. But you never did.”

And then, tucking her broomstick awkwardly under one arm, Mildred walks the short distance to a stone bench along the castle wall. Once settled, she pulls her mittens off with her teeth and stares down at the box as if afraid it might explode at the touch.

Hecate steps toward her without meaning to.

Mildred begins tearing at the paper. She lifts the lid of the box.

The crystal gleams in the weak sunshine, reflecting the ice blue of the sky in its pearlescent surface.

“What is it?” Mildred asks, raising her head at last.

Hecate swallows, the cold biting at her throat. “It’s for you. To use. It’s for magic.”

Mildred blinks up at her, a strange sort of fear blooming in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Suddenly exhausted, Hecate walks over and sits gingerly next to Mildred on the bench, feeling the weight of Mildred’s gaze on her.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reaches out a hand and takes the crystal from the box.

Closing her eyes, she thinks of summer, of sunlight, of long days, of the light dying late in aching violet sunsets.

She opens her eyes.

The centre of the crystal gleams with golden light that spins like a bright copper coin.

“What’s that?” Mildred asks, leaning closer over Hecate’s arm.

“It’s a reflection, of sorts. It’s what…what my magic looks like, casting a warming spell,” Hecate explains, feeling suddenly very self-conscious.

Mildred looks up at her. “It shows you what your magic looks like?”

“In a way. It allows you to practise gathering the energy for a spell without hurting yourself. So you can learn,” Hecate sighs, “what it _feels _like to cast a spell. Before you cast it.”

Mildred leans away again, staring at the ground. After a moment, she draws her knees up to her chest, her face set.

Hecate’s stomach clenches. What has she done now?

“It isn’t very funny,” Mildred says, her voice muffled by her purple corduroy trousers.

“What isn’t?” Hecate asks, starting to feel a bit frantic.

Mildred shoots her a heated look over her folded arms, her eyes over-bright. “Why would you give that to me? It’s mean.”

“_What?”_

“You know I can’t use it!”

“What do you mean, you can’t use it?”

“I—can’t—do—magic!” Mildred shouts, whirling on Hecate.

“Of course you—“

“You said—You _said _that I couldn’t even manage a simple task!”

“_Mildred_—“

“You said that there was very little hope for me at all!”

They sit there staring at each other, Mildred’s shout ringing in the still air of the courtyard.

Hecate watches her, feeling ill.

“Mildred, I…”

Mildred breathes a shuddering sigh and turns away again, hugging her knees. Her mittens slip off the bench and onto the muddy ground below.

“Mildred,” Hecate whispers. Her eyes sting. She clears her throat. “I apologize. I never should have said those things to you. I—I was frustrated. But that’s no excuse.” She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault,” she says softly. “It never was. Not any of it.”

Mildred shrugs her shoulders. Across the courtyard, a pair of blackbirds burst from the branches of a leafless poplar.

“You _can _do magic,” Hecate insists, desperate, her chest swelling with some nameless emotion. “You did magic in front of the whole school, on Halloween.”

“Only because Miss Pentangle was helping me,” Mildred mumbles desolately.

“Yes. She was doing what I should have done all along.” It surprises Hecate how little it pains her to concede this to Pippa.

Mildred stills.

“I was…” Hecate takes a shaking breath. “I was never disappointed in _you_. Mildred. Do you understand? I was disappointed in _myself. _I was—I didn’t know how…“ She swallows. “I didn’t know _how_ to help you.”

She hadn’t known until that moment exactly how she’d felt: helpless. _Useless._ It catches her like a punch to the gut; she closes her eyes, a phantom ache in her ribs. “It was my fault,” she murmurs.

“You scared me,” Mildred says into her knees. “When we were at the pond. You scared me on purpose. So I’d listen to you.”

Hecate’s chest aches. “That was…” She clenches her fists inside her cloak. “I thought I was doing the right thing. But I wasn’t, Mildred, I—” She blinks back sudden tears. “I should have—realized—” She shakes her head. Her past wasn’t for Mildred to worry about. “I should never have done that to you,” she manages, finally. “I apologise.”

It is quiet for a long time.

Hecate feels as if she might shake apart. Words echo in her head, across minutes, across years.

Slowly, slowly, Mildred unfolds herself. “I didn’t know what I was doing wrong,” she says quietly, glancing cautiously up at Hecate. “And…I didn’t know how to fix it.”

Hecate presses her lips together into a tremulous smile. “Neither did I.”

Mildred searches Hecate’s face, some of her distress shifting into something more thoughtful.

“You’re a really weird grown-up,” she says finally, wiping at her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.

Hecate blinks, and then has the startled notion that she might laugh, though she wouldn’t have been able to say why.

“You talk to me like I’m a real person,” Mildred continues. “Almost nobody but Mum does that.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to say to that.

Mildred swings her legs, tucking her hands under her knees. “I’m still angry, I think,” she says.

Hecate swallows. “That is…understandable.”

“Not all the way, not like I was.” Mildred opens her mouth, then closes it. “I wish you’d stop going away,” she says after a moment. “You don’t come to Friday dinner anymore.”

“No.”

“And you never told me to come back.”

“No,” Hecate says again, her voice strained.

“I yelled at you. But you never told me to come back.” Mildred swings her legs harder. The tips of her toes nearly scrape the ground. She looks away across the courtyard. “I thought you didn’t want me to.”

Hecate flinches. “That…wasn’t the case.”

“I wish you’d stop going away,” Mildred says, for the second time.

Hecate closes her eyes.

Mildred sighs. “Everyone goes away.”

They’re silent for a long while, the morning growing brighter around them.

Hecate wrestles with herself.

“I had thought we might…” She begins at last. “That is: I’ve been reading some things I believe may benefit you. I had thought we might try them. Or,” she adds hastily, “if you’d prefer, I can assist you and your mother in finding another tutor who may be more helpful to you…”

She trails off, watching Mildred’s face uncertainly.

“Can we still do things where you’re not my teacher?”

Hecate frowns. “Where I…?”

“You know. Other things. Not just learning magic.” Mildred wrinkles her nose. “Only you’re sort of…a bit…” She shrugs. “You’re just…a _teacher_, those times.”

“I’m always a teacher,” Hecate says, bemused.

Mildred heaves a sigh. “_Yes, _but you’re not always _my _teacher,” she says, as if explaining something she’s been made to repeat several times. She peers up at Hecate. “It’s different when you are.”

Hecate stares uncomprehendingly. She’d forgotten what an exercise in mental fortitude Mildred’s conversational style was.

“Can we still do other things?” Mildred asks again.

“_What _other things?” Hecate asks, exasperated.

“Like when I was staying with you!” Mildred replies, equally exasperated. “We picked brambles, and made toys for Morgana, and you showed me how to use a quill, remember? Just normal person things, not teacher things.”

Hecate blinks at the girl. “I…suppose,” she says finally, though she cannot comprehend what Mildred would want with doing that.

“Then yes.”

Quite at the end of her patience, Hecate asks, “Yes, what_?”_

“Yes, I want to try the magic things you were reading about.”

“Oh,” Hecate breathes.

“Is that what that’s for, then?” Mildred asks, pointing at the crystal in Hecate’s hands. “Because you know how to help me now?”

Hecate grips the crystal. The gold has long faded. She sighs, then looks at Mildred with all of the confidence she can muster.

“I believe I do.”

They walk back up to the castle together, Mildred hop-skipping all the way, several times nearly clubbing Hecate in the arm with the handle of her broomstick.

It is not until they are inside that Hecate has the presence of mind to notice how positively caked in mud Mildred is.

“What _were _you doing, you silly girl?” she demands, aghast, as Mildred stamps her feet on the doormat in the entrance hall. Her trainers leave little dirty footprints on the rug, and the bright green of her Ordinary winter coat is stained brown all down one side. “Broomstick mudsliding?”

Mildred looks at herself. She shrugs. “I fell?”

Hecate gives her an incredulous look.

“A lot.”

Pressing her lips together, Hecate waves her hand and vanishes the mud—then adds a drying spell for good measure, which sends Mildred into a fit of giggles.

Julie is waiting for them at the entrance to the dining hall.

Hecate feels a jolt of apprehension as she meets Julie’s eyes, remembering the hard calm that had been there before the holiday.

But Julie only gives her a wary smile before looking down to address Mildred. “I thought you were never coming in—You must have been sat out on that bench for an hour!” She puts her arm around Mildred’s shoulder. “Come on, Miss Tapioca’s made something that might have been fish pie in a past life.”

“It’s good luck if you get a bone, Miss Drill said,” Mildred says, walking with them into the hall. “Miss Bat got one last time, and she found her missing sock right after.”

“Well, that’s a comforting thought, isn’t it?” Julie says, catching Hecate’s eye. “I think we could all use a bit of luck after last year.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Happy New Year!


	19. Chapter Nineteen

February comes, with its long nights and short, faded days. Hecate leaves a set of Humphrey’s Long-burn Safety Matches on her bedside table to save her awkward stumblings in the dark. (She had long since learned that dark rooms, dark cats, and Lamplight spells were a mix sure to incinerate drapery, at the very least). She lights one on a dull, foggy morning, clutching her dressing gown about her shoulders, the bite of sulphur in the air, and she remembers half-forgotten stories of the bog witch, Grunhilda, who could kill a man with a single sulphurous breath.

Somehow, it makes the day more bearable.

**

The students make their raucous return to the castle, the noise and bustle jarring to Hecate after nearly a month with only a reticent familiar and her own listless thoughts for company.

“Good to be back, HB?” Miss Drill asks as she passes the Brussels sprouts to Hecate at dinner the night before the start of classes.

Hecate gives a noncommittal hum.

She believes she might be dreading the beginning of a new term as much as the students are—perhaps more, she thinks, looking around the cheery dining hall. The girls chatter happily to each other, showing off Yule gifts and shrieking with laughter at stories of holiday mishaps.

At a table under the darkened windows, Geraldine Bluebell is stood at her seat, doling out what look to be little steamed dumplings from a wicker basket that shimmers with a preserving spell.

“Is there any pork in these?” Audrey Moon asks, peering curiously into the basket, a box of Yuletide cherry chocolate cauldrons under one arm.

Geraldine leans across the table to plop a dumpling on the edge of Penny Newt’s plate. “No, it’s just beef and chives. Made them with my aunts for the lunar new year.” She reaches into the basket and pulls out a small glass jar full of a brown liquid. “Here, you should try them with the sauce.”

Audrey does as she’s told, takes a bite, and declares it the best thing she’s ever eaten at Cackle’s.

Miss Tapioca looks murderous.

**

Classes begin the next day, regardless of Hecate’s feelings on the subject, and, as she had expected, within two weeks she is once more up to her eyes in marking and detentions and Deputy-Head duties. On the second Friday of term, _The Daily Mirror _runs a special article announcing that the Hallow conspirators’ trial has been scheduled for the second week of May, and Hecate is startled into the realization that the events of last spring had quite slipped her mind of late. It is a less-than-pleasant reminder, particularly as she suddenly finds herself somehow fielding even more press inquiries than she had the previous summer.

She tells herself that at least this term had not begun, as had the last, with the weight of an incomplete potions inventory around her neck—but that offers very little comfort in the heat of things.

Perhaps the only person more hassled than Hecate is Ada, who seems to spend most of February alternately agitated and absent. She spends meals staring off across the hall, hardly touching the sweet pastries she favours with her tea. She’s distracted in conversation, nodding along to things she should have opposed, beginning sentences only to trail off in the middle. One week, she wears the same cardigan three days in a row, though it has a gravy stain on the elbow. Misses Drill and Gossamer whisper about senility.

But Hecate believes it must be something more sinister. During her habitual Tuesday-afternoon tea in Ada’s office, she notices the rumpled scrolls of parchment marked with the Great Wizard’s seal, and the letters from parents and news witches and Council members left unopened beside them on Ada’s desk.

She leans closer on the pretence of reaching for the sugar bowl.

—_I’ve stood up for you, Miss Cackle. But now our fates are intertwined. If you cannot meet the demands being placed upon you by the Council, if you cannot gain the support of the public, I’m afraid I will be forced to take action—_

_—and the committees have been taken over by young people who have wasted no time pushing their progressive ideas. If quinquennial reviews have been lenient in the past, it was due to your reputation. A reputation, I fear, which has been rather tarnished of late—_

—_The trial, as you know, is set to take place in just a few short months and must necessarily bring the events of last spring once more into the public eye. It would be best if Cackle’s was shown to have taken steps in the right direction before then—_

_—and I would lament the closure of the school along with you. However, make no mistake: given the choice, I would preserve the trust of the public over the survival of a single institution, no matter how ancient and noble its past—_

Hecate scowls at the audacity of the man. _Great Wizard, _indeed.

**

The first guest lecturer of the winter term visits midway through the month—a witch from Amulet’s, who is quite frankly more traditional than even Hecate can stand. After the witch, a Miss Darkside, gives a particularly fervent lecture bemoaning the outlaw of indentured apprenticeships, Ada admits she had perhaps not checked the witch’s references as thoroughly as she had thought. The staff breathe a collective sigh of relief when Miss Darkside departs early Saturday morning, having publicly declared her refusal to spend another breakfast trying to consume Miss Tapioca’s lumpy porridge.

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Mildred says that afternoon, as she arranges herself at Hecate’s kitchen table. “She reminded me of Miss Hackensack.”

Hecate privately agrees, though she doesn’t say so. Instead, she mutters another cleaning charm at the little easel blackboard she’d transferred up from the storeroom on the first floor, though she knows full well—having spent a good deal of time that morning assailing it with Miss Lavender’s All-Purpose Scouring Potion—that the board is already clean.

They are to resume their lessons today.

She had gone to dinner with the Hubbles last evening, a subdued affair during which Hecate had spoken very little and eaten even less. Mildred had accosted her partway through the meal with a ‘contract’ stipulating the conditions of their return to lessons:

First, that they were to divide the allotted two hours’ time evenly between strictly academic work and Mildred’s so-called ‘other things.’

And second, that they would not end the lessons unless there was mutual agreement that it was for the best.

The contract had been written in purple ink on a piece of Ordinary lined paper, many of the words scratched out several times over. Hecate had read through it as best she could before shooting Julie a bewildered look across the Hubbles’ kitchen table. Julie had only nodded toward the paper.

_Signed,_ it read, under the jumble of purple words, and there were two crooked lines drawn below.

Mildred had already written out her clumsy signature across the first.

“You’ve got to sign it for it to be official,” Mildred had said, fixing Hecate with a serious look. She’d held out a plastic pen with a tuft of strange purple fur attached to one end.

And so, feeling a bit ridiculous—and also, somehow, shy—Hecate had taken the pen and signed her own name underneath.

And then Mildred had showed up at her door this afternoon as if nothing had happened. As if everything was alright again.

“Are we going to start now?” Mildred asks, watching Hecate curiously.

Hecate flexes her hands at her sides, nearly dropping the chalk.

She hardly ever uses chalk in her classes; the texture of it is dry and strange against her fingers.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate feels a bit ill. She glances down at the stack of books and notes she’s arranged at the edge of the table nearest her.

For a moment, it is as if she’s forgotten everything she’s ever known.

_When talking about Nominal magic, remember T.A.L.O.N.N.S! _proclaims a spell-marked page of _The New Elementary Spellcasting._

“There are—“ Hecate clears her throat. “There are, to the modern understanding, two broad categories of magical energy. One is called _intrinsic, _meaning that this energy comes from inside us: from emotion.” She hesitates. “This type of magic is quite…new. Not many witches practise it, and those who do must wield it very carefully. Magic cast using intrinsic energy is called _modern _or _emotive _magic.”

Mildred is staring at her with rapt attention.

Hecate breathes. “All other magical energies are _extrinsic, _meaning that they come from forces outside ourselves. These kinds of energies have been used by witches for thousands of years, since the very beginnings of organized magical practice. Because of this, magic cast using these energies is called _traditional magic._”

Gripping the chalk, she turns to the blackboard. “Traditional magic can be further divided into three branches. Those are: Nominal, Vital, and Wordless.”

She writes each branch on the board.

(_Nominal! Vital! Wordless! _ chirps the board, which Hecate had spelled with a dictation jinx.)

“Vital magic is the branch of magic that consumes Vital energy—that is, it is magic that uses energy from plants or animals.” Hecate watches as Mildred scribbles something in her notebook. “This would include most potions.”

“Wordless magic,” she continues, once Mildred has finished scribbling, “is the branch of magic that does not require chanting or incanting. A witch uses this kind of magic as an extension of her own body.” Mildred scribbles some more. “You have already attempted to use this kind of magic—“ Mildred’s head jerks up “—in your exercises with the marble.”

“We will discuss both of these in more detail at a later time,” Hecate says. “For now, we will focus on the third branch, which is Nominal magic. This is magic that uses energies we call on by name.”

And, taking the chalk, she writes out _T. A. L. O. N. N. S. _down the left side of the blackboard.

(_T! A! L! O! N! N! S!_ chirps the board).

“Talons? _Talonnnns_?” Mildred asks, her nose wrinkling.

Hecate’s cheeks warm. “It is a mnemonic. To help you remember. Each letter stands for a type of energy used in Nominal magic.” She points to each letter in turn. “Temporal, Astrological, Lunar, Orientational, Numerological, Natural, and Seasonal.”

She glances back at Mildred, who is beginning to look a bit overwhelmed.

_Remember to engage your students in the learning process, _Pippa’s book had said. _ It is essential that children feel a part of their own education._

Hecate clears her throat. “Do you—would you like to guess what ‘Temporal’ spellwork might involve?” she asks, gripping tightly to the chalk with clammy fingers.

Mildred rests her chin in her hand. “Tempest means ‘storm,’” she says thoughtfully. “And temporary means ‘for a short time.’” She bites her lip, looking cautiously across at Hecate. “So: maybe weather or time?”

Hecate, impressed despite herself, tries not to show it.

(_Praise when warranted, _Pippa’s book sing-songs in her head. _One should not be afraid of praising emphatically and often—it is the absence of praise that is most damaging.)_

“It is the second,” Hecate says, writing ‘time of day’ next to the _T. _on the board. “Spells using Temporal energy must be cast at a particular time of day,” she explains. “…Well done,” she adds belatedly, turning to face Mildred again. The words feel stiff and awkward in her mouth.

Still, Mildred beams.

She has Mildred guess at the meanings of ‘Astrological’ (_celestial energy; energy that comes from the stars and planets_), ‘Lunar’ (_the energy of the moon_), and ‘Orientational’ (_directional energy; energy drawn from the caster's position relative to the magnetic poles of the earth_)—and the girl manages to roughly guess two of the three.

“’Numerological,’” Mildred says, chewing on the end of her pencil. “That’s to do with numbers, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hecate says, making another note on the blackboard. (_Magic! Done! With! Numbers! _the board chirps.) “Spells using Numerological energy draw on the power inherent in certain numbers, or in certain numerical patterns.” She looks at Mildred, considering.

She clears her throat. “Do you remember,” she begins, touching her fingers to her timepiece, “the Yule party several years ago…” She pauses, suddenly thinking it very possible that Mildred did _not, _in fact, remember. She’d been quite young then. Hecate shakes her head. “You…recited a poem for me, I believe,” she says, her cheeks warming.

Mildred nods, tucking her legs under her on the chair. “_’Twas the Night Before Christmas._”

“Yes,” Hecate says, relieved at Mildred’s remembrance—though she couldn’t exactly say why. “You told me you liked the ‘rhyme scheme.’”

Mildred tilts her head. “You remember that?”

Hecate looks away. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“I dunno.” Mildred shrugs. “Most adults don’t really pay that much attention to what kids say. I don’t think so, anyway.”

_You’re a really weird grown-up, _Mildred had told her in the courtyard.

Hecate taps at her timepiece. “Yes. Well. I remember.” She glances back at the blackboard. “’Rhyme scheme,’” she says attempting to adopt a more professional tone, “along with meter, is an element of numerological spellcasting. Chanting, in fact, nearly always uses Numerological energy.”

Mildred scribbles something else down in her notebook. When she’s finished, she raises her hand in the air, propping her elbow up with the opposite hand.

Hecate frowns at her, bemused. “Are you…asking to speak?”

Mildred switches arms, nearly knocking the vase of dried chamomile off the table. “Yes.”

“Mildred, you…” Hecate begins, at a loss. _Praise when warranted. _“That is…appreciated. But unnecessary. As it is just the two of us.”

“Can I just ask you questions then? Like normal?” Mildred asks, her hand still in the air.

Hecate sighs, already regretting her answer. “…You may.”

Mildred grins and sets down her hand. “Alright. Can a spell use more than one kind of energy?”

Hecate takes a moment to reorient herself to the subject at hand.

But she pauses too long, because Mildred continues, “Because I’ve heard the girls practicing their chanting, and Miss Bat did that chanting display last year at Miss Cackle’s birthday—you know, the one with the dancing figs. And sometimes they chant about the moon, or about the seasons, or about plants and animals. So they must also be using other kinds of energies, too, and not just numbers.”

“That is correct,” Hecate allows. “Many spells call on more than one kind of energy.” She steps forward, meeting Mildred’s eyes emphatically—for they have inadvertently come to the salient point. “But you must understand that, though the title _Nominal _may seem to indicate otherwise, simply naming an item in a spell is not enough invoke its energy. You must…” she looks away. “You must find a way to _mean _them—“ she grimaces “—to _feel _them in the moment you wish them to be invoked.” She looks back at Mildred, who is watching her with rapt attention. “Do you understand?”

Mildred nods, hesitant. “It’s what you said last time about the difference between _saying _a spell and _incanting _it, isn’t it?”

Hecate swallows, recalling the words she had shouted at Mildred during their last lesson. She nods.

“I _know_ that’s what I’m meant to do,” Mildred continues, tugging at her sleeves. “I just—I don’t understand how to_ do_ it—”

“That is perfectly alright,” Hecate hurries to say, noting with dismay that she seems to have made the girl anxious. “You will learn. I will teach you.”

Mildred’s shoulders relax a fraction. Then she frowns, glancing down at her notebook. “Miss Hardbroom?”

“…Yes?” Hecate braces herself for an impossible question.

“Chanting is under Nominal magic, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hecate answers, her brow furrowing. “As we’ve just discussed.”

“But witches sometimes chant about plants and animals,” Mildred continues, as if Hecate hadn’t spoken.

“That is…true.” Hecate wonders where she’d gone wrong in her explanation if they were still belabouring this point.

Mildred picks up her notebook. To Hecate’s astonishment, the page is filled with sketches—moons and planets, an Ordinary watch, a compass rose, a daisy and a rabbit peering out of a cauldron, a pair of lips with a line drawn through, a set of marbles, what looks like Miss Bat with a string of numbers curling out of her mouth. “But plants and animals is Vital magic,” she protests, pointing to the cauldron, which Hecate can see is marked with a small ‘v.’ “You said so!”

Hecate realizes the problem. “We have not yet discussed the second ‘N,’” she says, pointing back to the chalked _T.A.L.O.N.N.S._ “It stands for ‘Natural’ energies. Spells that use these energies call upon the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire—“

“But—“

“_Kindly _do not interrupt,” Hecate admonishes. “You’ll have your answer if you would only let me finish.”

Mildred sighs, dropping her chin into her hands.

“As I was saying, Natural energies emanate from the four elements, as well as from plants and animals.” Anticipating Mildred’s objection, she gives the girl a quelling look. “The key difference between Vital magic and the Natural energies used in Nominal magic is that Vital magic _consumes _energy from a _particular _plant or animal—for example, from the pondweed you would add to a Levitation potion. The Natural energies used in Nominal magic, meanwhile, are drawn from the Ideal form of a plant or animal. This means that the energy does not originate from a _particular _plant or animal, but rather from the _idea_ of that plant or animal.”

Hecate pauses, noting Mildred’s puzzled expression. “It is…” she ducks her head, sighing. “It is, I believe, rather exactly what you had said, that afternoon by the pond last summer. Do you remember?” She raises her eyes, pressing her lips into a cautious smile. “You had wondered why the moon pulls at our magic. You told me you thought perhaps it was because of what the moon _meant._” Hecate swallows. “Like a metaphor. And you were correct. Natural energies—like all Nominal magical energies—are invoked by thinking particularly about what their sources _mean,_ more than what they are.”

Mildred is looking at her strangely. “I asked Miss Pentangle about that, and she said…” She screws up her face. “But why didn’t you just _tell _me I was right? Maybe it would have helped me, before! Maybe I would have been able to do that beetle spell, all the way last summer!”

“Mildred, I—“

“Did you _want_ me to be bad at it? So you could teach me—about needing control?”

Hecate’s stomach clenches. “Of course not!” She sinks down into a chair, the stack of books and notes nearly obscuring her view of Mildred, who is fixing her with a baleful look across the table. “Mildred…Of course not,” she repeats, despairing.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

Hecate looks down at her notes. “Because I didn’t know,” she murmurs.

“What do you mean?” Mildred asks, quieter. “You…” She wrinkles her nose. “You know _everything._”

Hecate looks across at Mildred. “Unfortunately for both of us, that is certainly not the case.”

“But—weren’t you taught this in school?”

Hecate shakes her head. “No.”

Mildred shoots her a look of consternation. “Not any of it?”

“We were taught that spells use certain natural and mystical energies, as I had told you last summer. But we were never given explicit instruction in the classification of these energies,” Hecate says, running her fingers over the open pages of _The New Elementary Spellcasting, _“nor were we taught to call upon the energies with such deliberate effort as these books suggest. And, certainly, using emotion was entirely out of the question.”

Mildred frowns. “I don’t understand. How did you do magic, then?”

Hecate sighs, her gaze drifting aimlessly about the room. “Do you know what ‘tacit knowledge’ is?”

Mildred shakes her head, leaning forward on her elbows. Morgana slinks into the kitchen and begins twining herself through the legs of Mildred’s chair.

“It means…knowledge that cannot be conveyed through explanation. It is knowledge you must acquire through experience. The phrase _like riding a broomstick _comes to mind.”

Mildred looks thoughtful. “I _think_ we say ‘like riding a bicycle,’ but I don’t know if it’s the same thing.”

“Yes, well. It was believed—most people still believe—that spellcasting is tacit knowledge. Pupils are sometimes told to draw upon certain energies when casting a spell, but they are not given practical instruction in how to actually go about doing it. That part is left up to…trial and error.”

Mildred is watching her oddly.

Hecate tries to keep her expression neutral.

“When I was learning to ride a bicycle,” Mildred says finally, “I fell a lot. Mum held onto me at first. But then she had to let go. And I fell a lot.”

Hecate presses her lips together. She can’t think of what to say.

Mildred’s eyes flick over the stacks of books and notes in front of Hecate. “Did you…” she bites her lip, meeting Hecate’s gaze. “Erm. Did you learn all of this…just to teach me?”

Hecate’s cheeks warm. “…Yes.”

Mildred stares at her.

Hecate clears her throat. “Though I’ve found it useful to my own education as well.” She looks down at her folded hands. There are so many things she wishes she’d known. So many things she should have been, should have done, should have understood…

“I think it’s sort of nice.”

Hecate lifts her head, frowning. “What?”

Mildred wrinkles her nose. “Well, we’re sort of learning it together, aren’t we?” Morgana has jumped up into Mildred’s lap, and Mildred rests her chin gently on the cat’s head. “It’s not just me, alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Here is a rough sketch of what would be written on Hecate's blackboard:
> 
> **Intrinsic magic**: magic done with the energy from emotion (also called 'modern' or 'emotive' magic)
> 
> **Extrinsic magic**: magic done with energy from external forces (also called 'traditional' magic)
> 
> Three branches of traditional magic: Nominal, Vital, Wordless
> 
> -_Vital magic_: magic which consumes Vital energy (the energy from plants or animals)  
  
[Hecate doesn't mention this, but there are also certain spells (most of them illegal) which consume Vital energy from humans. The necromancing spells used by Hecate's father would be a (very illegal) example of this.]
> 
> -_Wordless magic_: magic which does not require chanting or incanting; magic used as an extension of the body  
  
[Again, Hecate doesn't talk about it here, but this would include transference, summoning, some forms of vanishing, and substitutiary locomotion. Most modern witches also classify Section Seven duelling as a kind of Wordless magic. However, because there is some argument that a Section Seven consumes energy from the witch herself, certain witches make the case that this type of duelling should be cross-classified as Vital magic. Others argue it should be classified in neither category and should instead be considered a branch of intrinsic magic, though it does not use energy from emotion. (The precise nature of Section Seven duelling is the subject of much debate.)]
> 
> -_Nominal magic_: magic which uses energies we call on by name; T. A. L. O. N. N. S.
> 
> T. Temporal Energy: time of day (spells must be cast at a particular time of day)  
A. Astrological Energy: celestial energy; energy that comes from stars and planets  
L. Lunar Energy: energy of the moon  
O. Orientational Energy: directional energy; energy that comes from the caster's positioning relative to the poles of the earth  
N. Numerological Energy: magic done with numbers (spells use the energy inherent in numbers or numerical patterns)  
N. Natural Energy: energy from the four elements and from the Ideal forms of plants and animals  
S. Seasonal Energy: energy of the four seasons


	20. Chapter Twenty

In the week after Mildred’s first lesson back, Hecate finds herself watching Julie for some sort of reaction. She’s not sure precisely what she expects—some indication of how well it had gone, perhaps. It feels, when she inspects the inclination further, uncomfortably like she’s waiting for approval. Once she realizes this, she attempts in disgust to excise the inclination by avoiding Julie’s line of sight entirely.

Things have been strained these past weeks.

Hecate attends dinner on Fridays. _I wish you’d stop going away_, Mildred had said, and so Hecate does.

But she hasn’t been able to regain whatever ease of conversation she’d had with Julie before last autumn. Neither has she been able to shake the awareness that she’s managed to hurt Julie twice now, and Mildred once—and them both many times before that, back when their presence at Cackle’s was new and unknown and…

Unfortunately, Hecate’s plan to avoid extraneous encounters with Julie is brought to a rather abrupt halt on Wednesday afternoon, when, upon exiting the staffroom, she runs bodily into the woman.

“Oh!” Julie exclaims, the books and papers in her arms scattering across the floor. “I’m terribly—“ She cuts off her apology once she sees who it is she’s collided with. “Hecate.” She bends down to retrieve her things before Hecate can fully register her expression—though it had looked, to Hecate’s mind, like one of startled dismay.

Flustered, and not a little hurt (though she tells herself firmly that she deserves whatever negative feeling Julie might still hold towards her), Hecate reaches down to help gather the scattered papers. They look to be marked essays. She catches the title of one: _The Ordinary Industrial Revolution, by Addie Coppercauldron. _The girl had achieved a ninety-eight percent.

“Thank you,” Julie says, taking the gathered papers from Hecate’s hands.

They both stand, brushing dust from their clothes. Hecate doesn’t know why she’d not simply magicked the whole lot up from the floor, like a proper witch.

“I thought I’d make jacket potatoes this Friday,” Julie says, adjusting everything in her arms. “Or salmon, if you’d prefer.”

“It hardly matters,” Hecate says hurriedly, meaning for Julie to make whatever she and Mildred would like, and leave Hecate’s opinion out of it. She hardly wants to be an inconvenient guest, in addition to an unwanted one.

But Julie seems to have taken it in entirely the wrong way.

“Oh.” She blinks, clearly struggling to keep offense from colouring her voice. “Well.”

And she turns and walks through the staff room door before Hecate can think of anything to say.

**

“Pass the peas, would you, HB?”

Hecate transfers the serving dish into the space in front of Miss Drill’s plate.

Miss Drill nods at her. “Cheers.”

“—and I tried the switch-grip, just like you said,” Mildred is saying from Miss Drill’s other side. “And I did widdershins without running into the wall!”

“Well done, Mildred!” Miss Drill enthuses, spreading butter over her peas. “Next thing you know, you’ll be doing pivots no problem—“

“I _say_!_” _Miss Bat exclaims beside Hecate, her nose buried in a gravy-stained newspaper.

Hecate peers over in concern, wondering if there was news of the trial preparations, or of the Council, or of some declaration from the Great Wizard—

“Sales on Tallulah’s Tress Tonic!”

Deflating, Hecate rolls her eyes and returns her attention to her plate, debating whether to continue wrestling with the impossibly dry cut of mutton or to simply vanish the thing and risk Miss Tapioca’s wrath.

She misses Ada standing, and is startled by the sudden sound of her projected voice.

“Your attention please, girls! If I may have your attention!”

The dining hall comes to a raggedy silence, the girls turning to face their headmistress with utensils halfway to their mouths.

“As you all know, half-term is fast approaching—“

A few cheers erupt throughout the hall.

Ada smiles. “Yes, yes. And I am very pleased to announce that our half-term trip this spring is being arranged by none other than our own Miss Hubble!”

More cheers.

Hecate glances at Julie, whose cheeks have gone pink.

“She has been working diligently with her counterpart at Pentangle’s Academy—“

Hecate’s knife squeaks along her plate.

“—to arrange a joint trip to an Ordinary museum in Derbyshire.”

Murmurings break the silence, the volume rising as Ada continues to speak.

“We hope—“ Ada says, raising her voice to be heard. “—that this trip will serve to broaden your understandings of life beyond this castle, and to give you practical experience interacting with the Ordinary world.” She smiles around at the girls. “Those of you who wish to attend can put your names down with your heads of year. Please do so by next week.”

Ada nods at them all, and then sits down once more as the hall dissolves entirely into excited chatter.

“It’s the museum we went to before, Miss Hardbroom,” Mildred calls over the noise, leaning forward to meet Hecate’s eyes around Miss Drill. “Remember?”

Hecate gives Mildred a vague nod, hardly sure what to make of it all. Julie had been working with someone at Pentangles? Surely this must have been going on for months, at least; half-term trips were notoriously difficult to plan, and the challenge would certainly have been doubled by the addition of another school.

And yet, Hecate had heard nothing of it.

She cannot decide whether to be indignant, though the strange weight in her stomach seems to indicate that her body has decided for her.

“…and Miss Spinner-Schmidt, and Miss Pentangle,” Mildred is saying, and Hecate’s stomach drops.

“Miss Pentangle’s coming?” Miss Drill asks, directing the question at Julie.

Julie nods.

“Brilliant,” Miss Drill declares, grinning. “I’ll look forward to seeing her again.”

Hecate’s ears ring.

Pippa.

And, of course, it was just Hecate’s luck this would be the spring trip. Had Julie planned this for the autumn, Ada would have been going in Hecate’s place. That’s how it always was—Ada along in the autumn, and Hecate in the spring…

She feels her hands trembling and laces them together.

No. No, this would not do.

She had faced Pippa before, last term. It had been awful.

Awful. But bearable.

And so help her, she would bear this.

Reaching for her goblet, Hecate takes a shuddering sip of water.

She feels Julie’s eyes on her, but by the time she turns, Julie has looked away again.

**

In March, Hecate takes Mildred foraging for late winter roots in the woods around the castle.

They had finished their lesson early—or, rather, Hecate had made the decision to cut the lesson short for the preservation of life and limb. She had set Mildred about practicing with her Tell-All crystal, with the aim of gathering the appropriate energies for a Switching spell. It had not gone smoothly. Despite the girl’s best efforts, by the end of thirty minutes a teacup had been shattered, a sack of dried beans incinerated, and a parade of digestive biscuits sent whizzing single-file around the perimeter of the kitchen.

“I’m doing it all wrong again!” Mildred had wailed, as the biscuits pinged noisily against the sides of the upended kitchen pail Hecate had just trapped them in.

“You—are—simply—not—_concentrating,_” Hecate had ground out, straining with the effort of keeping the biscuits from knocking the pail out of her grip. She couldn’t get a hand free to vanish them.

“I am!” Mildred held up her copy of _The New Elementary Spellcasting_, where she had annotated the words of the Switching spell with a string of hand-drawn pictures: a wind gust—autumn leaves—a crescent moon_._ The spell involved Lunar, Seasonal, and Natural energies, and this was the image-story Mildred had constructed to help her gather them. “I’m thinking about everything I’m meant to!” Mildred narrowed her eyes. “Maybe it’s the wrong pictures.”

Hecate, who had finally managed to do away with the biscuits, leaned over the pail, breathing heavily. “The pictures are perfectly fine. You are allowing your thoughts to become distracted before you have finished gathering the energy, and so it is releasing prematurely into the room. That is why the crystal glows only briefly, and never turns the proper—“she consults the text surreptitiously “—teal.”

Mildred sighed dramatically. “But I have to think about what I’m meant to say, and then the pictures just sort of…fall out of my head.”

“You’re not meant to be saying anything, at the moment. We’ll get to the incantation once you’ve managed to gather the energy properly.”

Mildred flopped back in her seat. She crossed her arms and looked away, her jaw working. “I can’t do it.”

“You can and you will,” Hecate had said firmly.

It had taken two more shattered teacups and a waltzing mop before Hecate had decided they’d had enough for one afternoon.

Now, Mildred seems to have quite forgotten the earlier mishaps and frustration. She walks happily at Hecate’s side, nose and cheeks pink with cold, dirty hands carrying a basket full of wild radishes and Warlock’s Teeth.

The sun seeps weakly through the bare treetops, and Hecate thinks vaguely about the cup of tea she’ll have when she returns to her rooms. Perhaps she’ll try the new Earl Grey Ada had brought back from Yorkshire…

“When will we do a spell with things in?” Mildred asks, clambering over the rotting trunk of a fallen tree.

Hecate grasps the girl’s elbow to stop her toppling over and spilling their forage. “With what things in?”

Mildred rights herself and holds up the basket of roots. “_Things. _A spell where you need things. Or potions. You know, Vital magic.”

“I am hoping eventually to teach you the novice brewing techniques necessary to prepare Level One potions. Perhaps that will be something for the summer. However, you’ll likely be in school when you attempt a spell that needs an augment.”

Mildred looks over her shoulder at Hecate. “What’s an ‘augment’?”

“An augment is a material magical component that helps to call upon or produce the energy necessary to cast a spell—an animal part or a casting staff, for example, are both kinds of augments. You will often see them used in Vital magic, and somewhat less so in Nominal magic.” Hecate transfers herself over the tree trunk, rematerializing near Mildred on the other side. “They are called ‘augments’ because they amplify and extend the words you are saying.”

“The words you’re _incanting_.”

Hecate stills—and then rolls her eyes at Mildred, who giggles behind her bright red scarf.

“Why do I have to wait for school?” Mildred asks, continuing along the path.

Hecate frowns. “Because…it is not cottage-level spellwork.”

“That’s like primary for witches, isn’t it? The girls talk about it, sometimes: what they used to do in ‘cottage school.’”

“Many girls attend cottage school before going on to academies, it is true,” Hecate says, leading the way to the edge of the wood. The castle towers are just visible over the rise of the hill. “But some, like you, are taught at home.”

Mildred moves to chew on her thumbnail—before appearing to remember it had just been digging in dirt. “I…I won’t be behind everyone, will I?” she asks. “Because I’m not…because…?” She trails off helplessly.

“There will likely be some things you do not know—things that perhaps the other girls have grown up familiar with. That is somewhat…unavoidable, I believe.” Hecate presses her lips together. “But I shall do my best to ensure you are prepared to the same level as the others, academically.” She looks down at the girl. “Besides which, you’ve spent the better part of the past three years living in a witching school. You may not be as ‘behind’ as you think.”

Mildred brightens, falling into step next to Hecate. “Last week, Miss Drill said if I practise really hard I might even be able to pass my Broomstick Proficiency Exam before next year.”

Hecate does not comment on this.

Mildred looks up at her, squinting against the sunlight. “Did you go to Cackle’s, when you were little?”

“I—“ Hecate glances at Mildred. “I did not.” She adjusts her cloak around her. “I attended Amulet’s.”

“They were here for the tournament!”

“They were.”

Hecate does not say any more on the subject, and Mildred seems content to let it drop.

After they’ve deposited their spoils in the Potions storeroom, Hecate transfers herself and Mildred to the corridor outside the Hubbles’ rooms.

Julie answers the door. “Hello, you!” she says to Mildred. “How did the magicking go?”

“Alright. Sort of,” Mildred says, passing under her mother’s arm and into the rooms. She begins shedding her winter garments into a messy pile by the door. “Some stuff exploded. But then we found Warlock’s Teeth.”

Julie raises her eyebrows at Hecate, alarmed.

“A root vegetable,” Hecate explains, letting out a breath, her eyes drifting toward the ceiling. Her fingers tap against the metal of her timepiece.

“Oh! Well. That…is only slightly less confusing.” Julie clears her throat. “Erm…” She lingers in the doorway, gripping the frame with her hands. Mildred clatters about in the kitchen behind her.

Julie sighs. “Hecate, I wonder…” she begins, but lets the words fall away into silence.

Hecate feels the quiet expand like a weight behind her lungs.

It isn’t Julie’s fault, this distance that’s grown between them. Hecate knows what sort of person she is: the sort of person who does not—who _cannot_—seem to stop harming the people around her.

She knows Julie will stop trying, at some point. She should have done already.

Hecate doesn’t understand why she hasn’t.

_I wish you’d stop going away, _Mildred had said. And so Hecate stays.

But she understands there is no answering promise.

“…nothing,” Julie says, pressing her lips into a brief smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Never mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

_Dear Miss Hardbroom,_

_My name is Phyllida Buckett. I am writing once more to inquire whether you would be willing to sit for an interview with _The Witch’s World. _As you are aware, the trial of the perpetrators of last spring’s attacks at the Triennial Witch Ball Tournament is scheduled to take place in May. We hoped that, as a key witness, you might be able to—_

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up from the latest press inquiry—which, she notices, she has managed to tear at the edge where she’s gripped it.

Mildred is lying on the rug in the front room, teasing Morgana with a bit of string she’d found in the larder.

“Do you think Matilda’s an Ordinary witch?”

Hecate frowns. “Matilda?” She pulls a fresh piece of parchment from a desk drawer and dips her pen into a bottle of black ink. There were no girls at Cackle’s called Matilda, she thinks, ridding the excess ink from the tip of her pen.

Mildred pushes herself up to sit, tucking her legs under her. Morgana pounces on the end of the string as it drags across the floor. “Yes, _Matilda_. From the book?”

_Miss Buckett, _Hecate begins.

“Which book?” she asks.

_Per my last three replies—_

Mildred moves the string again. _Swish. _

Morgana pounces. _Thump._

“You know, the _book._”

—_I possess neither the inclination nor the ability to grant your request for an interview—_

“I obviously do _not _know, or I would not have asked.”

_Swish. Thump._

“The book. _Matilda. _By Roald Dahl. The one about the girl with the horrible family. They’re nasty to her, so she plays tricks on them, like stuffing a parrot up a chimney.”

—_As I have no desire to endure the questionable pleasure of our correspondence any longer—_

_Swish. Thump._

“And she goes to school and her headmistress is Miss Trunchbull, and she’s worse than her parents. She throws kids out the window. And one time, she hung this boy upside down by his ankles because there was a bean on his shirt from lunch.”

_—I would ask that you now leave me in peace—_

_Swish. Thump._

“And then Matilda accidentally spills a newt on her when she was being really horrible—and that’s how she finds out she has magic. Matilda, I mean. Not Miss Trunchbull. Only, I don’t think she calls it magic. And nobody ever calls her a witch.”

–_If comprehending this simple request is somehow beyond your capability, I would suggest a change of career—_

_Swish. Thump._

“But that might be because everyone in the story is Ordinary. Her family are all Ordinary, too.”

—_Signed, Hecate Hardbroom._

_Swish. Tump._

“So, do you think she is?”

Hecate sets down her pen, reading over the letter once more with an aggrieved sigh. Sufficient.

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred gets up from the floor and flops onto the settee, leaning across the arm toward Hecate’s writing desk and resting her chin on her hands. “Are you listening?”

Hecate folds the letter and melts a bit of wax onto the seam. She presses a stamp into the pool; the wax flashes gold as it hardens. With a twist of her wrist, the letter folds itself into the shape of a bird and transfers away.

Mildred tilts her head, nibbling at the end of her plait. “Why did it glow?”

Hecate puts up her quill and ink and then vanishes Miss Buckett’s letter with particular zeal. “There is a Courier charm in the wax,” she says. “It allows for the transference of items over distances not normally within range of the spell.” Wiping the ink from her fingers, Hecate turns toward the girl. “Now, what was it you asked?”

“Oh!” Mildred straightens. “I asked if you thought Matilda was an Ordinary witch.”

“I…wouldn’t know.” Hecate had only been paying half a mind to the girl’s ramblings—and, anyway, believes she would not have been able to make heads or tails of it even had she given Mildred her full attention. Something about _parrots up chimneys. _

“Haven’t you ever read the book? It’s really famous. Everyone’s read it.”

“If it was written by an Ordinary author, I doubt that is true.”

“It _is _famous,” Mildred frowns. “They made a film of it and everything.”

“I am not disputing its fame in the Ordinary world. What I _am_ saying is that I believe you would be hard-pressed to find another person in this castle who has read this book—or, indeed, any other book by an Ordinary author.”

Mildred wrinkles her nose. “Why?”

“Well, because…because…” Hecate presses her lips together irritably. “…Because it never would have occurred to them. Just as it never would have occurred to you to read _The Sunlight and the Sage._”

“The what?”

“Precisely.”

Mildred slumps back against the stiff cushions. “But…you know about the Ordinary world.”

Hecate stands, closing and locking the writing desk. She sighs. “Mildred, if you mean me to understand something by that statement…”

Mildred throws her hair over her shoulder. “I mean: you know about the Ordinary world. It would make sense that Ordinary people wouldn’t read witches’ books, because they don’t know that witches exist. Not really. But witches know about the Ordinary world. So they could read Ordinary books if they wanted to.”

Hecate taps her fingers against her sides. “…_And_?”

Mildred looks up at her querulously. “_And _they don’t. They could, but they don’t.” Morgana leaps up onto the settee next to her. Mildred strokes her head absently, biting her lip. “Maybe that’s why all the girls don’t know anything about…about _anything_—because they never read about anybody but themselves. Well, before Mum came, anyway.”

Hecate has nothing to say to that. An uncomfortable feeling stirs in her stomach. She pushes it away.

“I think you should read _Matilda,” _Mildred decides_. _“It’s really good and really funny. And then you can see what I mean about her being an Ordinary witch.” Mildred hops up from the settee and hurries across the room.

“Where are you going?” Hecate demands.

“To get the book!” Mildred says, jogging backwards out the door.

Hecate raises an urgent hand. “Don’t slam the—“

_Bang!_

Hecate jumps. Then, recovering herself, she twists her lips in exasperation and goes to pick up the hat that had been blown off the hatstand by Mildred’s habitual careening.

Morgana makes a sympathetic noise from the settee.

Sighing, Hecate drops down next to her, wondering what it was about Mildred that always made her feel as if she were two steps behind, flying in a windstorm.

In spite of herself, she feels a prickle of curiosity about the book Mildred wished her to read. She has never before read an Ordinary account of magic…

_Bang!_

The door flies open again.

Morgana lets out a startled hiss.

Heart pounding, Hecate scowls at the girl. “_Mildred, _I’ve asked you a hundred times not to slam the—“

“Something’s wrong with Mum,” Mildred gasps, tumbling into the room.

Hecate stands quickly, transferring them at once to the corridor outside the Hubbles’ rooms.

The door is still ajar. Mildred rushes inside ahead of Hecate…and then slows as she reaches the rear corridor of the flat.

Hecate nearly walks straight into her.

“Mildred, what’s—“

Then she hears it.

The unmistakeable sound of someone crying.

Her heart seizes. She looks down at Mildred, whose face has gone still and solemn. The girl’s eyes are fixed on a half-closed door at the end of the corridor.

“What if Granny Hubble’s died?” she whispers.

Struck, Hecate tries to think of what to say.

Suddenly, Mildred strides forward, mouth set, her hands pushing at the door before Hecate can stop her.

Julie’s room is dark.

As Hecate’s eyes adjust, she begins to make out the shape of Julie where she sits on her rumpled bed, knees pulled up to her chest, one hand pressed over her eyes as she cries.

The sound makes Hecate’s chest ache.

The floor of the room is strewn with papers and old tea cups and mismatched socks. A pile of clothes spills out of a chair in the corner. Light from the hallway cuts a dim path toward the bed.

“Mum?” Mildred whispers, walking softly into the room.

Julie starts badly, her hand coming to rest over her heart. “Mildred!” She uncurls herself, scrubbing hastily at her cheeks with the sleeves of her overlarge jumper. “What are you—how did you—?” She stills. “…_Hecate_?”

Hecate stands frozen in the doorway, stuck fast as if by quicksand.

“What happened?” Mildred asks, tugging anxiously at the end of her plait. “Is Granny Hubble alright?”

Julie tears her gaze away from Hecate to look at Mildred. “Yes,” she says, managing a tight-lipped smile. She sniffles, clears her throat. “Yes, she’s fine. Everything’s fine.” She moves to the edge of the bed and reaches for Mildred’s hands.

Mildred frowns at her. “No it’s not.”

Julie looks taken-aback. “I…”

“You were crying again.”

“I…had a little row with your Auntie Mo, is all,” Julie says, glancing at the telephone on the nightstand. “I…” She presses her lips together, shakes her head, her hair drifting messily over her shoulders. “Millie, love, you don’t have to worry about me.” She reaches out again.

Mildred wriggles away. “Why are you pretending?” she demands. “You always tell me it’s okay to cry. But you pretend you don’t.”

Julie watches her, looking lost.

Mildred crosses her arms over her chest, scowling at her mother.

Julie presses the tips of her fingers to her forehead. With a shuddering sigh, she lifts wary eyes to Hecate. “Hecate, I’m sorry. You don’t have to be here—“

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Julie’s reply is cut off by a loud ringing from the kitchen.

“Oh!” Julie puts her face in her hands. “That’s the chicken.” She makes to rise from the bed.

But Hecate beats her to it, walking briskly to the kitchen and opening the oven.

Grey smoke rises out of the door, filling the kitchen with an acrid smell.

Hastily, Hecate closes the oven again and vanishes the chicken from inside, along with as much of the smoke as she can manage.

“Oh.” Julie stands at the entrance to the kitchen, sagging against the wall. “Oh no. I must have forgotten to turn it down. I—“ She brings up a hand to her mouth, tears forming in her eyes as she stares at the now-empty oven.

“Mum?” Mildred asks, standing at Julie’s side.

Julie forces a smile, blinking rapidly. “Don’t mind me, love.” She chuckles humourlessly. “Crying over burnt chicken. Silly me.”

The kitchen falls silent, the air stale and sour from the smoke. The oven light casts a strange shadow across the floor.

Mildred looks from her mother to Hecate, like she expects Hecate to somehow fix everything that had gone wrong.

Hecate takes a cautious step forward, flexing her hands at her sides. “I have potatoes,” she says, after a moment’s casting about for words. And then realizes this was not the clearest statement to have made.

Thankfully, Mildred seems to cotton on. “Yes, we can make potatoes,” she says, tugging on her mother’s arm. “Miss Hardbroom looked up how to boil potatoes when I was staying with her last summer. And I bet she’s loads better at it now.”

Hecate makes an offended face at Mildred.

Julie resists Mildred’s tugging. “Mildred, you can’t just invite yourself into other people’s kitchens,” she says, giving Hecate an uneasy look.

“But I didn’t,” Mildred insists, pulling Julie harder toward the door. “_She _invited us.”

“I—listen, you don’t have to—“ Julie says to Hecate.

“I do wish you’d stop saying that,” Hecate says briskly, waving a hand at the oven to shut it off. “I’ll transfer us.”

She twists her wrist and they appear in Hecate’s front room.

Upon seeing Julie, Morgana streaks away under Hecate’s writing desk.

“It’s only Mum,” Mildred says to the cat, tugging Julie to sit down on the settee.

In the kitchen, Hecate lights a fire in the belly of the stove and transfers a large pot onto one of the hotplates, filling it with water from a Fountain spell.

“Miss Hardbroom,” Mildred says, walking up to Hecate’s side as she’s spelling a knife to peel the potatoes. “Have you got any more bourbon biscuits?”

“You’ll spoil your dinner,” Hecate says, reaching three chipped plates down from a shelf over the sink. It’s lucky, she thinks, that she even has three plates together. She can’t recall ever needing that many at once.

“They’re not for me, they’re for Mum!” Mildred insists, bobbing distractingly next to Hecate’s elbow.

Hecate glances out toward the front room, where Julie is staring despondently into space.

“The biscuits are in the larder,” she says reluctantly, watching Mildred scamper eagerly into the little narrow room opposite the stove.

After a few moments of noisy rustling that makes Hecate nervous for the jars of preserved brambles and pickled beets she knows are the biscuits’ near neighbours, Mildred reappears with the biscuit tin and rushes past Hecate to bring it to her mother.

The pot begins to boil. Hecate salts the water and begins transferring the peeled potatoes into it, opening her timepiece to note the time.

Out in the front room, she hears Julie and Mildred speaking softly to each other.

“Millie, love,” Julie says. “How about you go and ask Miss Hardbroom whether she’d like some help in the kitchen.”

Moments later, Mildred appears at Hecate’s side, looking a little subdued. “Do you want any help?”

In truth, Hecate would much rather Mildred stayed with her mother, but she imagines that Julie had sent the girl into the kitchen to buy herself more time to put on a brave face.

And so Hecate does her part.

“Set these on the table,” she says, handing Mildred the plates. “_Don’t _drop them.”

Sighing, Mildred does as she’s told.

On her way back from the table, Mildred becomes momentarily fascinated with the spelled knife, which is still peeling curled ribbons of potato skin into the Vanishing Barrel.

“Where does it all go?” Mildred asks, making to stick her hand into the barrel.

“_Don’t!_” Hecate catches Mildred’s wrist, heart in her throat. “You foolish girl! Do you want to lose a hand?”

Mildred peers, wide-eyed, into the empty barrel. “It would cut off my hand?”

“Vanish it. And anything else you put into it,” Hecate adds with a sharp look, before letting go of Mildred’s wrist.

“That doesn’t seem very safe.”

Hecate transfers a bowl of dried beans up from the school kitchens. “Neither is a kitchen knife, if you were to run your hands across it—which most people have the sense _not _to do.” She frowns down at the girl. “I seem to recall telling you to keep clear of that barrel s_everal times _before_._”

“But I didn’t know what would _happen_,” Mildred protests, eyeing the barrel with a certain level of morbid curiosity.

“And so you thought the best recourse would be to experiment with your own limbs?” Hecate asks pointedly, using a Vice jinx to speed up the soaking of the beans.

“I didn’t think—“

“Precisely,” Hecate says, turning to face the girl once more. “I expect better if we are to start in with potions in the summer.”

“You said we were only doing a Levitation potion, at first.”

“We are.”

“But it doesn’t sound dangerous.”

Hecate eyes the girl. “All magic is dangerous, if—"

“—used improperly,” Mildred says wearily, slumping into what has become her customary seat at the table. “I know. You’ve said. _Several times._”

Hecate makes an exasperated face at the girl, but finds herself secretly relieved that they’ve come to the point where they can casually discuss the very real dangers of magic without either of them becoming overwrought or weighted down by memories of past mistakes. 

Hecate keeps half an eye on Mildred as she drains the beans, summons broth and spices from the larder, and sets the lot in a second pot on the stove.

Mildred rests her chin on her folded arms, absently rolling a blue marble across the table in front of her.

Hecate watches her thoughtfully.

Skeptical as she had been at first, Hecate would now admit (though perhaps only to herself) to the merits of modern magical pedagogy. The suggested techniques had strengthened Mildred’s ability to such a degree that she is now not only capable of incanting three cottage-level spells with relative accuracy, but also of performing the exercises in magical control that Hecate had so despaired of her learning last summer. Hecate marvels at the casual ease with which Mildred magicks the marble now. The girl hardly seems aware she’s doing it, a feat which would have seemed impossible a mere month ago.

Children often learned simple substitutiary locomotion—the most elementary form of Wordless magic—in cottage school. The marble exercise was an example of this brand of magic, and Hecate wonders whether she ought to allow Mildred to move on to slightly more challenging tasks of a similar nature, such as opening doors or pouring tea—but in the end decides to leave this up to Mildred’s unfortunate Spell Science teacher, whomever that might be. The same person would also be responsible for teaching other forms of Wordless magic: summoning in the third or fourth year, vanishing in the fifth, and transferrance in the sixth…

Hecate has a sudden image of Mildred, aged sixteen, popping into Hecate’s front room with all the grace of a slammed door.

She shudders.

Mildred begins rolling the marble in circles, round and round the vase of dried sage at the centre of the table. The motion makes Hecate dizzy.

“Come here, please,” Hecate says, pressing a hand to her temple. She sets Mildred about the task of shelling a sack of peas, and the girl sits on the side next to the sink, a metal bowl propped on her lap, tossing pea pods into the Vanishing Barrel with only occasional accuracy.

Morgana, recovered from the shock of a stranger in her home, creeps into the kitchen to sniff curiously at the pea debris scattered on the floor.

Hecate stirs the beans and drains the potatoes, placing them in a roasting pan with olive oil and a sprig of rosemary from the small arrangement of fresh potted herbs in her kitchen window.

“I’m finished,” Mildred says, holding the bowl out for Hecate’s approval.

Hecate takes the peas and pours them into the potato pot, now simmering with fresh water.

“Finish laying the table, if you please,” Hecate directs.

Mildred kneels up on the side to reach the wide wooden shelf where Hecate keeps her water glasses.

“Can you fill them?” Mildred asks, gesturing at the glasses.

Hecate, draining the peas into the sink, looks over her shoulder.

“You learned the Fountain spell last week,” she says, nonchalantly.

Mildred grins. “Really?”

Hecate gives her a small smile. “Really.”

Of course, it all falls into ruin.

Mildred, eyes closed, is just beginning to gather the appropriate energy for the spell when Julie walks into the kitchen to return the biscuit tin.

Startled by her mother’s presence, Mildred massively overpowers the spell—sending water flying everywhere.

“Aah!” Mildred shrieks, ducking her own hands.

“Oh!” Julie shouts, stumbling backward, clutching the biscuit tin to her chest.

“Mrrrow!” Morgana cries, streaking away down the back corridor.

Hecate, spluttering, incants the counterspell, shielding the beans bodily from the spray.

The stream of water slows, stops.

Mildred coughs.

Julie, soaked to the skin, hair dripping sluggishly onto the biscuit tin, stands in the doorway, shocked.

Hecate grimaces. “_Apparently_ we have some revising to do.”

Mildred gapes at her.

Julie brings her hand do her mouth. She ducks her head against her chest, her shoulders hitching.

At first, Hecate thinks she must be crying again.

But then Julie is laughing—laughing so hard she has to brace herself against the wall—laughing so hard she sits down, hard, on the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Mildred is laughing too.

Hecate, who can’t quite see what is so funny, incants a drying spell—which only makes the Hubbles laugh harder.

Finally recovered, Julie pulls herself off the ground and goes to sit next to Mildred at the table as Hecate sets down plates of peas and beans and roast potatoes in front of them.

“It looks wonderful, Hecate, thank you,” Julie says, a bit of reserve creeping back into her voice.

They eat, and Mildred chats pleasantly about the enlarging charm she’d practised that afternoon on Hecate’s cushions.

Afterward, Mildred helps with the washing up—though Hecate takes charge of the Fountain spell—and Hecate puts the kettle on, disappearing into the larder to look for something to have with the tea other than the biscuits Julie seems to have nearly finished.

“Is this the train you gave her?” she can hear Julie saying to Mildred out in the front room, where the little blue steam engine is still sitting on Hecate’s bookshelf.

“Yes,” Mildred answers.

“The one you put the old batteries in?”

Mildred takes a moment to reply. “…you knew?”

“Of course I knew, Millie-love,” Julie says. “I couldn’t exactly miss the way our remote suddenly stopped working, could I? Or the way you kept asking me whether I was sure she could come and ask me for more, if they ran out. Asked me about five times a day for a week, you did.”

“Sorry,” Mildred says quietly.

“I’m not sorry at all,” Julie insists. “Not one bit. You were trying to fix things for me.” There’s a rustling of fabric. “But you don’t have to worry about me, Mildred. You hear? I never want you to have to worry about me.”

“But—you’re my _mum._”

“That’s right. I’m your mum,” Julie says firmly. “I take care of you, not the other way ‘round.”

“But what if you need taking care of?”

“I can take care of myself, love.”

“But what if you can’t?” Mildred asks, clearly upset.

“…oh, Mildred…”

“You _can’t_ sometimes. Like today.”

“It was just a bad day, Mildred.” Julie sighs. “I’m alright, really. I’ll be alright.”

“You’re sad.”

“I…”

“You _are._ I know you are,” Mildred insists. “Even though you pretend you’re not. You can _tell _me things. I’m not a baby.”

“I know that, sweets,” Julie says gently. “I know. But…some things are things I just have to work on myself. For myself. Do you understand?”

“…I guess.”

“Mildred…” Julie falls silent. “I never want you to think that you have to worry about me like that. Never. I promise you, I’m fine. And if I’m not fine, I will find somebody who will help me _get _that way. Alright?”

“Alright.”

“If you ever get worried, I want you to tell me. Or tell another grown-up you think you’d like to talk to.”

Mildred hesitates. “Even if it’s…about you?”

“Even then. Just like you did with Miss Hardbroom today.”

“…you’re not angry about that?”

“No, lovey,” Julie says warmly. “You did exactly right. You were worried, and you needed help. And she helped you.”

“She helped _you._”

“She did. Because _you_ asked.”

Mildred sniffles.

Julie pauses. “Mildred, I want you to live your life for you, alright?” she says, finally. “For _you, _not anybody else. You are so kind, and smart, and _brave. _Braver than anybody I know. But I want you to turn those things toward yourself, before you turn them on anybody else, you hear?”

Mildred sniffles again.

“Come here,” Julie says. “We’re going to be fine, you and me. Just fine.”

The kettle whistles on the stove. Hecate doesn’t move to get it.

Instead, she stands alone in the darkened larder, a tin of biscuits clutched against her stomach, her chest feeling like it’s cracking open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

After tea, after Mildred’s fallen asleep in an armchair near the Victrola cabinet, Morgana curled up across her lap, Julie stands.

“I suppose we should go,” she says softly, turning back toward Hecate. “Thank you. I really appreciate it, even if…”

Even if.

Hecate waits, wondering if this is the moment.

Even if…

_Even if we’re not friends anymore._

Julie clears her throat. “Anyway, thanks,” she says. “You didn’t have to.”

Something twists in Hecate’s gut. “What do you mean, ‘I don’t have to’?” she demands, suddenly giving voice to the question that’s been nagging at her most of the evening.

Julie looks startled. “Well, I just thought…”

“You thought what_?_” Hecate asks, her fingers curling into the edge of the settee, the tea service cooling on the low table in front of her.

“Hecate…” Julie begins, expression strained and uncertain. “You’ve been so…so careful around me these last months.”

Hecate folds her arms across her chest, avoiding Julie’s eyes. She hadn’t known she’d been so transparent.

“And I keep thinking…“ Julie heaves a sigh. “I was too harsh with you when I spoke with you about Mildred, last year, at the Yule party. I said things—there were things that needed to be said, and I said them. But I also said…” She looks at Hecate. “The things I said about your father, Hecate. I’m ever so sorry. You’d trusted me enough to tell me about him. About you. And I’m so sorry if I made you feel like…like you couldn’t talk to me.” She swallows, smiling sadly. “So I suppose what I mean is: thank you for looking after me today. Even if I’m not exactly the person you’d choose to spend an evening with, anymore.”

Hecate gapes at her.

Julie gives a self-conscious hitch of her shoulder, her eyes suspiciously bright in the light of the low fire burning in the hearth. She walks toward Mildred. “Anyway, as I said, we should be—“

Hecate rises, takes a step toward her. “Wait.”

Julie turns.

Hecate stands there, struggling for words.

“Hecate...it’s alright,” Julie says, sighing shakily. “You don’t have to…”

“Stop telling me what I do and don’t have to do!” Hecate says, then, with a glance at Mildred, lowers her voice. “And apparently I _do_ have to, because you—you think I don’t—” The idea of it is incomprehensible. She flexes her hands at her sides, looking away. “How could you think I didn’t wish to speak to you?” She manages, her voice rough.

Julie takes a step forward. “Hecate…” She swallows. “You avoid me in the halls. You barely say two words to me at Friday dinners. You sit next to _Miss Bat _at meals, when everybody knows if there’s a thing you despise more than Code violations it’s being talked to before eight in the morning and—“

“It’s because I don’t know how!” Hecate interrupts, desperation growing in her throat, making her more truthful than she would perhaps otherwise be. She turns away, pacing in front of the fire, her heart pounding in her chest. “I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to be—“ She tangles her fingers in the chain of her timepiece.

Julie steps in front of her, shaking her head, her curls brushing over her shoulders. “You don’t have to be anything. Or do anything. To talk to me.”

Hecate stills. “Yes I do. Of course I do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Hecate raises her head. “I’ve made you think—“ Her breath hitches. “I’ve made you think I didn’t wish to speak to you.”

“You didn’t _make_ me do anything—“

“—All last year, I tried to be…somebody you would want to—to keep. But I—“

“—Hecate_—“_

_“—_I’m not that kind of person. I can’t be. I’ve _hurt _you. I’ve hurt Mildred. And I know you’ll—“

“—Hecate—“

“—grow tired of it. Of me. And I don’t understand—“

“—_Hecate—“_

_“—_I don’t understand why you’re still here!”

“—_Hecate!_” Julie insists, her fingers gripping gently at Hecate’s forearms. “I’m not stood here waiting to leave you.”

Hecate flinches as if struck.

Julie searches Hecate’s face. “You don’t have to…” She presses her lips together. “Hecate. Lovely, you don’t have to _try _and be somebody I care about.”

Hecate’s vision blurs.

“You ask too much of yourself,” Julie says, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Hecate’s ear. She hadn’t had the chance to fix it after Mildred’s Fountain spell disaster. The gesture makes Hecate’s chest tighten painfully.

A tear falls down Hecate’s cheek. “You do as well,” she says fiercely, when she can manage words again. She scrubs irritably at the wetness on her face. “How could you think I wouldn’t have wished to help you, today? That I wouldn’t have helped you before now, if you’d asked?”

“I…I rather thought you wished me anywhere but here, after what I’d said to you in December.”

“Why would I be angry with you for defending your daughter?” Hecate asks, bewildered.

“It was…what I said to you about your father.”

Hecate ducks her head. “You told me I was nothing like him.”

“I also told you to ‘pull yourself together,’ if you remember.” Julie breathes a shaky sigh. “I never meant that, Hecate. Never.”

Hecate watches her, trying to understand the moment she’d found herself standing in. “I don’t wish to be,” she says.

“…be what?”

“Like him.”

Julie frowns. “Hecate…”

“I could be.” Hecate swallows. “I see in myself the same sorts of…of tendencies. Toward anger. Toward loss, and unreason and hunger for power. For control.”

Julie opens her mouth to speak.

Hecate cuts her off. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible.”

“Don’t tell me what to tell you,” Julie retorts, a frank look on her face. “Anyone who loves like you—“

Hecate’s cheeks flush painfully. Her mouth twists. “_Love_ is what corrupted him in the first place!”

“No, _obsession _is what corrupted him in the first place. Hecate, what he tried to do for your mother—that’s not love. When you love somebody, you let them go when they need to. Even if it feels like you’re carving out your own heart.”

Hecate blinks.

“If you ask me, I’d say you had the opposite problem. You let people go too quickly. You’re so sure you’re going to hurt them.”

“I will,” Hecate protests. “I have!”

“Yes,” Julie says. “By leaving them behind.”

It takes a moment for the words to register—and then Hecate suddenly feels as if the floor has been vanished from beneath her.

She grabs onto the mantelpiece for support, her ears ringing.

“Hecate?”

Julie ducks her head to meet Hecate’s eyes.

Hecate closes them against the spinning of the room.

She feels Julie’s hand at her arm, at her back. “Right, away from the fire.”

Julie leads her to sit on the settee, holds Hecate’s hand tightly in hers as Hecate struggles to even out her breathing.

Her head feels overfull, like somewhere a door had been blown open by a sudden wind. Well-hidden thoughts—decades-old memories, old storms of self-hatred—tangle together, pressing up against the backs of her eyelids, dizzying and violent.

She’s not sure why it feels like a revelation.

_You hurt them by leaving them behind. _

She’d never meant it to hurt—or, perhaps she had—or perhaps she’d never thought about it. Perhaps she’d just _felt _and _done _and never _thought _at all.

It was…perhaps it was rather that she’d never considered herself essential enough to be missed….

She clenches her jaw against the thought and breathes and breathes and breathes. It would do no good to dwell on it now. Thirty years on, it hardly mattered the reason. Only that she never made the same sort of mistake again.

What an odd thought: that her absence could be a source of pain. She feels like, under different circumstances, she might have laughed at the idea.

When Hecate opens her eyes again, it is to see Julie watching her gently.

For some reason, it makes the tears return.

“Alright now?” Julie asks.

Hecate isn’t sure she could truthfully describe her state of being at the moment. She looks down at their clasped hands.

Julie squeezes tighter, then leans back into the settee next to Hecate.

“What happened? With your sister?” Hecate ventures, after a long while of staring into the fire.

“Oh, nothing important. Mum’s had a cold, and Mo’s been stressed at work, and one thing led to another.” Julie leans her head back on the settee, her hair fanning out around her. “She wishes I would come up and take my share of the responsibility. She wishes I wasn’t so obsessed with work that I never see our own mother. She wonders if that’s why Mum can’t remember my name anymore. She hopes I’ll be sorry when she’s dead…”

Hecate frowns, turning toward her.

Julie stares at the ceiling. “She’s right, you know. Not about all of it, but…I really…” Her throat works. “I really hate seeing her like that. I know she can’t help it. I know she’s ill. I know she still loves me, but…” She stops, clearing her throat. “Anyway. I don’t normally lose it like that. You don’t have to worry. I’m not…not leaving Mildred alone for hours, or anything. The room looked a mess, I know, but it’s only because—”

“Julie.”

Julie starts. It is perhaps the first time Hecate had spoken her given name aloud.

Hecate swallows. “You needn’t defend yourself to me. I…I meant nothing by asking.”

“Oh.”

“I would…that is, would you tell me if I—if I could be of some help? To you?” Hecate manages, her cheeks burning.

Julie seems to contemplate this.

“It’s…well, I don’t know what you witches call it, but in the Ordinary world it’s called depression,” she says, finally. She shrugs. “It’s worse during the winter months. I’ve been taking medication since I was nineteen. It helps. I…used to speak to somebody in town, but it’s been difficult, since living up here.” She presses her lips together, looking across the room at Mildred, somehow still fast asleep in the armchair. “I used to worry they’d take her from me, if anyone were to find out. If I—if I ever gave them a reason to.” She gives a humourless chuckle. “I’ve always been good at hiding it, ever since I was small. There was no room for it, in our house. Mum was always gone, working, and I had to take care of Mo and do well in school and be sure not to cause any extra worry. I had to be alright. So I was.”

Hecate’s heart aches.

“I suppose I still…” Julie shudders. “I never want to do that to Mildred. I’m so afraid—I’m _terrified _I’ll do the same to her.”

The conversation Hecate had overheard earlier comes drifting back.

_You don’t have to worry about me, Mildred. You hear? I never want you to have to worry about me._

_It was just a bad day, Mildred. I’m alright, really. I’ll be alright._

_I’m your mum. I take care of you, not the other way ‘round._

“You wouldn’t,” Hecate says, her voice tight.

Julie gives her a wry smile. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible.”

Hecate gives her an emphatic look. “Don’t tell me what to tell you,” she returns, and means it.

They fall silent again. Mildred snores softly in the armchair, the warmth of the fire turning her cheeks pink.

“I really am sorry, Hecate,” Julie says, after a long while. “About what I said. About your father. I know you said—but the look on your face when I…” She swallows. “I really hurt you. And I’m sorry.”

Hecate breathes. What an odd thing, she thinks, to be sitting here, like this. It seems almost impossible.

“It wasn’t my father,” she says, almost absently. “I mean to say,” she amends, when Julie frowns at her. “That was…what you said. But it was only that it made me realize…” She sighs. “My father never much cared what I did. As long as I stayed out of his way. I think…” She presses her lips together. “I think, after my mother died, the most we did was tolerate the other’s existence.”

Julie tightens her grip on Hecate’s hand.

Hecate finds herself wanting to explain…wanting to…

“When they came to take him away,” she says, “they sent me to a distant relative. I called her ‘aunt,’ but I believe she was something of a third or fourth cousin. Her name was Adelheid Broomhead, and she was, at the time, Headmistress at Amulet’s Academy of Witchcraft.”

Hecate’s gaze drifts around the room. “She was…a formidable woman,” she says. “And, I think, not a little invested in ensuring I did not turn out like my father. I was seven years old when I came to her—too young to attend classes with the older girls. But she tutored me herself, after hours, sometimes into the early morning. I was…never quite good enough to please her. My magic was—erratic, I would say. Uncontrolled.” Hecate presses her lips together. “I was frightened of her—everyone was—and that generally made it worse.” She swallows. “She did not respond well.”

She flicks her eyes toward her hand, still held in Julie’s. Julie’s fingers tighten again briefly. “As I’ve told you before,” Hecate says, “Hardbroom is a common name, particularly in the northern counties. It is illegal to refer to minor children in media reports without the consent of their guardian, and so none of the stories circulating about my father ever mentioned his having a child. Nobody at the school knew of my connection to him.” She sighs, her jaw tightening. “But this did not matter to my aunt. Every mistake, every moment of weakness was taken as a sign that I was headed down the same path as my father, that I was on the verge of revealing her shameful connection to a necromancer, or of bringing some further disgrace to the family. She would stand me on a stool in her office and make me recite the Code until I could do the whole thing through without pause. By the time I was old enough to join the student body, the rest of the teachers had been brought to see her view of things: that I was a horrible little disobedient child, that my magic was somehow disordered, that I needed a firm hand if I was ever to amount to anything.”

Hecate stares into the fire. “It was almost worse when I began to do well in my studies; I think she took it as a sign that her work had paid off. She took me on as her personal apprentice, and the after-hours lessons began again. She had ideas of my becoming a teacher, perhaps of my taking over the school after her retirement. She had no immediate female relatives, so it would be a case of opening the line, but I believe she had plans to name me in her Statement of Succession once I came of age. However, she died in my first year at university, just before my seventeenth birthday.” Hecate studies her lap. “Perhaps luckily for everyone involved.”

She raises her head. “And this is what I bring to my dealings with students.” She swallows. “This is what I brought to Mildred. And I—I suppose I hadn’t truly realized—hadn’t _let _myself realize…not until you said what you did in December.” She chances a cautious look at Julie. “And so, I suppose, I thank you. For that.”

Julie’s face is unreadable.

Hecate feels distant sort of terror beginning to hum under her skin She had thought that this would ease Julie’s fears of having somehow hurt her, but perhaps all she had done was make things worse…

Julie takes a breath. Then she meets Hecate’s eyes. “Don’t you dare thank me for that.”

Heart beginning to pound, Hecate opens her mouth.

Julie cuts her off. “Don’t you dare thank me.” She sighs, running her free hand over the side of her face. “If anything, you should be thanking yourself. _You _were the one who got yourself through all of that. _You _were the one who made yourself into the witch you are, not your horrible aunt. As for what you bring to your students…” Julie shakes your head. “Mildred’s told me how hard you’ve been working to learn all that modern stuff just so you can teach her. I know it wasn’t exactly your cup of tea, before, but you put all that aside so you could do your best by her.” Julie glances over at Mildred, still asleep in the armchair, and when she looks back her eyes are shining. “Hecate, that little girl _adores _you. And _you _did that. _You _did.”

Hecate’s throat works.

Julie sighs, lifting her gaze to the ceiling and blinking away tears. She shakes her head and mumbles something about waterworks. Then, giving Hecate a frank look, she tilts her head. “Would you let me…?” And, slowly, letting Hecate see what she’s doing, she reaches out and pulls Hecate into an embrace. “You’re _brilliant, _you are, alright?” she says, pressing her hands against Hecate’s back. Her voice hums in the bones of Hecate’s shoulders. “It makes me proud to know you.”

Hecate shakes, trembles like she’d just fallen from a high place and had somehow landed on her feet. Very, very slowly, she brings her arms around Julie’s shoulders and, after a moment’s hesitation, holds tight.

She’s forgotten what it felt like to be held: heavy and weightless at the same time. It makes her almost dizzy.

She thinks of her awkward attempts to comfort Julie that evening, of how clumsy and inadequate they are against Julie’s words—against Julie, who, even in the midst of her own crises, always seemed to know what to say.

Hecate despairs at herself--but then finds herself thinking a little on the bewildering possibility that it might not matter to Julie. That it might not matter that she’s not—that she can’t seem to….

_You’re brilliant. It makes me proud to know you._

Hecate closes her eyes. She can’t seem to make her voice work, but she hopes that Julie knows the sentiment is very much returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

“Hecate, I wonder…” Julie starts one Friday evening. They’re doing the washing-up from dinner—Julie at the sink, Hecate drying, Mildred frightening the life out of Hecate standing in socked feet on the side to put the glasses away.

“What is it?” Hecate asks, after the quiet has gone on for nearly a minute.

Julie sets down a half-washed plate. It slips under the soapy water. “I’ve spoken with Miss Spinner-Schmidt—the Ordinary Studies teacher at Pentangles…”

Hecate braces herself to hear more about the half-term trip—to hear mention of Pippa.

Julie swallows. “…and she’s given me the name of a—what do you call it—a mind healer? Who apparently deals with Ordinary cases as well as magical. And I’ve set an appointment with her for Tuesday.” She shrugs, avoiding Hecate’s eyes. “And I wonder—Dimity’s offered to fly me there and back, but I’d wondered if you might watch Mildred for me that evening?”

Hecate, who had been preparing to be told something much more grave, finds herself momentarily at a loss for response.

“Really, it might be more than one Tuesday evening,” Julie continues, “if I end up liking this person. So I understand if it’s too much. I can ask Miss Bat and Mister Rowan Webb, but they’ve got the Chanting Club Tuesdays—“

“Of course I will,” Hecate interrupts.

Julie’s shoulders drop, her relief evident. “Oh—you will?”

Hecate nods.

“Brilliant. That’s—thank you.”

“Of course,” Hecate repeats. She hesitates. “I’m glad.” She flinches. That was, perhaps, the wrong thing to say, but—

Julie smiles at her. “Thanks. Me too.”

They finish the dishes and retire to the living room. Mildred, who is apparently at a crucial part in her audiobook—something called _The Chimneys of Green Knowe_—retreats to her room, from which direction they hear occasional squeals and screeches and, once, a loud _NO! _

Hecate sips at her tea.

“I meant to tell you, you know,” Julie says, after a while.

There are any number of things she could be referring to, so Hecate simply raises an eyebrow in her direction.

Julie sighs. “About the half-term trip.”

Hecate feels her cheeks colour.

“I never planned for it to turn out this way. It’s just Meredith—Miss Spinner-Schmidt—and I got to talking, and it turns out we’d both been thinking of doing a trip somewhere Ordinary—how great it would be for the kids. But I didn’t think we’d ever get it past the heads—and certainly not this year, anyway. It was just an idea I’d mentioned to Ada in passing, to see how she’d take it, but she seemed to really get behind it. Wanted to know when we’d have a proposal ready.” Julie sips her tea, shaking her head. “So we pulled something together the next week. And then it was set.”

She glances at Hecate. “I know you and Miss Pentangle don’t get on. It was never my intention to put you into this situation. But she and Miss Spinner-Schmidt are close, and Meredith worked with her on the proposal, and I think—I didn’t feel right asking her not to come.” Julie bites her lip. “And it’s not that I didn’t notice your reaction to her—to Miss Pentangle—or to the trip, when it was announced—“

Hecate’s cheeks heat further.

“—I just didn’t know how to speak to you about it. I didn’t know if I had the right to, at the time.”

The room falls silent after that. Hecate sets her tea down on the side table, finds her hands are restless without it, and picks it up again.

She sips it, though it has gone tepid.

“I…don’t begrudge you this,” she says, finally, her eyes not leaving the dregs at the bottom of her cup. “I know—that is, I remember you’d wanted it.” She lifts her head. “When we’d come back from the museum, that day, you’d said…”

Julie stirs. “You remember that? I thought you were asleep.”

Hecate coughs. “No. Not…entirely.”

Julie says nothing. Hecate supposes there is nothing to say. It is not as if she’s quite moved past her formerly-held position on the matter: that it would certainly be folly to bring that many young witches out into Ordinary society. And to add to that folly a second school…well, it was almost as if they were asking for Exposure. She doesn’t know what she might say if Julie were to ask her opinion on the subject; likely something offensive or overly pragmatic, neither of which would be of any help to their recently mended relationship.

“About—“ she clears her throat. “About the other matter. I will certainly attempt to be civil. And I am sure Miss Pentangle will do the same.”

Julie makes an odd noise. “I’m not worried about _civility, _Hecate. I know you’re not about to—to deck her on the train platform, or anything.”

Hecate widens her eyes.

“I’m only concerned about you having to be around someone you clearly—“

Hecate sets her teacup down with a clatter, hoping somehow to forestall the next word, whatever it may be.

“—are uncomfortable with.”

Hecate’s face burns. She wonders what Julie must think. She opens her mouth.

Julie raises her hand. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Not if you don’t want to.”

Hecate closes her mouth again. She’s not sure she could, even if she _did _want to. She’s buried it so carefully for so long, she’s not sure she would know how.

Before she can make up her mind, Mildred’s door flings open and the girl rushes into the living room. “They found the treasure! It was his aunt! They saved the house!” she shouts, her cheeks wet with tears, and they spend the rest of the evening hearing an account of what seems to be a rather convoluted story about an old house that allows its inhabitants to fall backwards through time.

**

“Miss Hardbroom, you’re in the light.”

Hecate turns from the kitchen window to look back at the table.

Mildred is watching her with mild irritation, a bottle of Ordinary paste in one hand. She’s sat on her knees, leaning over the beginnings of a project she’s meant to be doing for school: a mosaic made with paper cuttings, representing something to do with life in Roman Britain. Morgana lounges on the table next to her, eyes half-lidded, her tail flicking near Mildred’s elbow.

“My apologies,” Hecate intones, bowing her head somewhat facetiously as she steps to the side.

The girl doesn’t seem to notice. She bends her head back over the bits of coloured paper strewn across the table. A blob of paste drops onto the table top; Hecate despairs for the wood grain.

“Did you know they used to pay Roman soldiers in salt?” Mildred asks, selecting a blue paper bit and applying it to the mosaic with what Hecate feels is an excessive amount of paste.

Hecate sips her tea. “I did not.”

“Yes, that’s why they call it a ‘salary.’ And did you know, the emperor used to make candles out of people with tar and light them on fire at his parties?”

Hecate frowns. “Are you learning this in school?”

Mildred shrugs, her eyes still on her paper. “Sort of. It’s on _Horrible Histories._”

Hecate remembers this is an Ordinary children’s television programme—and a rather lurid one at that.

“I wanted to do my project on Caligula—that’s the emperor who lit people on fire—but Mrs. Radjendran said I couldn’t because it was meant to be about Romans _in Britain_. And Caligula’s army only threw their spears into the sea, because he wanted to fight Poseidon, so they never actually got here. And also, he got murdered.”

“Hmm,” Hecate says. She had not thought Ordinary schooling quite so violent.

Mildred sifts through the paper bits, sending a few fluttering to the floor. She adds several red pieces to the mosaic, contemplating the effect for a moment before raising her head. “Can I go flying? It’s only half six.”

Hecate hesitates, unsure what she’s meant to say. Julie had given her no instructions about broomstick use before she’d left for the mind healer’s.

“Please? This isn’t due until next week, and I’m already ahead.”

“You’ve school tomorrow,” Hecate says, trying for a quiet evening. “It’s getting dark.”

“Please, _please, _Miss Hardbroom!” Mildred says, dropping forward onto her elbows. Morgana jerks upright, knocking a great pile of paper pieces to the floor. She jumps off the table to chase them. “No—Morgana don’t eat them!” Mildred says to the cat, scrambling to pick up the pieces, and then, to Hecate, says, “Miss Drill says I’ve got to keep practicing, for the Proficiency Exam!”

“And why did you not practise earlier, when there was still daylight?” Hecate asks, magicking the remainder of the pieces back onto the table. Morgana gives her a disgusted look.

“Because I had drama after school and then I had to get ready to come here!”

Hecate sighs, giving her quiet evening up for a lost cause. “Very well.”

After securing the half-finished mosaic out of Morgana’s reach, they walk down together to fetch Mildred’s broom from the P.E. broomshed, where she’d been allowed to keep it with permission from Miss Drill.

Hecate settles herself on a stone bench in the courtyard. Mildred takes off near the gates, rising up to the level of the castle wall before beginning a series of dexterity exercises Hecate remembers from her schooldays. As a trainee flyer, Mildred is not allowed up past thirty feet without someone flying Alongside. The girl stretches this restriction to its limits, and twice Hecate has to reprimand her for excessive speed.

Still, it is clear Mildred has made some improvement over the last months, her technique not quite as clumsy and her corrections much smoother than they had been when Hecate had seen her in January.

As Mildred flies, a group of girls from the Chanting Club walk up to the castle from the direction of the school greenhouse. If Hecate remembers the staff room chatter correctly, the Chanting Club members had been asked to join the Botany Club that evening in a chant for the growth and protection of the new spring plants.

Hecate spies Geraldine Bluebell among the group, laughing riotously as she ducks around Addie Coppercauldron, who seems to be attempting to tuck a pair of clover flowers into the twists of dark hair tied at the back of Geraldine’s head. Hecate hadn’t thought Geraldine would be one for either the Botany Club or the Chanting Club—or, certainly, for any sort of academic organization at all. She wonders how Miss Gossamer or Miss Bat dealt with the girl.

“Hiya, Millie!” Geraldine calls, cupping her hands around her mouth to shout at Mildred, who is making a rather poor attempt at a loop-the-loop near the south tower wall.

Mildred waves, nearly loses her balance, and then almost smashes herself headlong into the wall when her correction veers her off course.

Hecate, heart in her throat, has jumped to her feet and raised a hand to transfer the girl to the ground before she can even register her own movement.

She berates Geraldine and then Mildred and then Geraldine again, and by the time she and Mildred have returned to her rooms she has worked herself into such a state that she is seriously considering speaking with Julie about preventing Mildred from flying again.

“But—Miss Hardbroom—I fall all the time!” Mildred protests, following Hecate as she stalks toward the kitchen to put the kettle on. Morgana, who had been dozing on one of the kitchen chairs, streaks away with a hiss.

“That is hardly something that fills me with confidence in your abilities,” Hecate spits out, flicking a tongue of flame at the belly of the stove, the kettle clanging as she sets it forcefully on a hot plate.

Mildred, windblown, still holding her broom, follows Hecate around the kitchen, edging around her to face her dead-on. “But Miss Drill says it’s normal! She says it’s normal to fall when you’re learning. She says—“

“It is hardly _normal_ to fly with such carelessness that one almost brains oneself on a castle wall!”

“Miss Drill says—“

“You’ve been learning for nearly a year, Mildred. It’s high time you—“

“Miss Drill says—“

“I hardly care what Miss Drill says—“

“Just because you hate flying doesn’t mean I have to!” Mildred shouts.

Hecate stares at her. Mildred stares back, wide-eyed. The kettle begins to whistle.

There is a knock at the door.

Shaking herself, Hecate goes to answer it.

Ada stands on the other side, an uncharacteristically serious look on her face. “Hecate. I wonder if I might take a moment of your time,” she begins, and then spots Mildred. “Ah, Mildred! How nice to see you! How are you this evening?”

Mildred, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looks cautiously between Hecate and Ada. “Fine, Miss Cackle,” she says, finally.

“Mildred, please go and bathe,” Hecate says, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. “Your mother will be here shortly.”

Mildred, to her credit, does as she’s told.

Hecate invites Ada into the kitchen, sets the tea to steep, and waits.

“Hecate, you recall, of course, that the trial of the Hallows and their accomplices will take place this May.”

Hecate nods, pouring the tea into two cups. She hands one to Ada, who takes it with a small smile.

“I’ve been notified by a friend in the Prosecutorial Office that both you and I have been called to give testimony during the first stage. You should be getting an official notice within the week.”

Hecate nods again. She had held out some hope that her written affidavit would be enough; however, this turn of events had almost been a foregone conclusion. She does not relish the necessity, but she does acknowledge it.

“We are hoping to keep the girls out of it, if possible, but it may become necessary for the jurist to call some of them as well, depending on the course the trial takes. I think Audrey Moon, at least, is likely to be summoned.”

Hecate had assumed this as well. She is not a stranger to court proceedings—nor, for that matter, to the pages and pages of speculative articles that had been printed about the Hallow conspiracy trial for months. Surely Ada must know that.

Ada stirs sugar into her tea, but does not drink it. “I must also tell you…there is some concern among the Council that perhaps…” Ada sighs. “That perhaps there may be some culpability on my part.”

Hecate’s stomach drops. She opens her mouth to speak.

Ada raises her hand for silence. “I don’t want you to worry. The investigators were well satisfied that you had no part in the Hallows’ scheme—Julie was rather insistent on that point, and her statement, as well as Miss Thistlereed’s, have been taken under advisement. And so the Hallows’ plan to implicate me through your supposed involvement has failed. We can at least be glad of that.” Ada gives her a close-lipped smile.

Hecate feels ill.

“However, there are still concerns about the way the school is run, and how those administrative matters may have played their part in allowing the events of last spring to occur—“

“But that’s absurd!”

“No, I’m not entirely sure it is,” Ada says, shaking her head ruefully.

“Ada, surely—“

“I have received several letters from the Great Wizard himself, over the last year. He has very kindly—“

Hecate snorts.

“—seen fit to provide me with some—“ Ada clears her throat “—_suggestions_ for moving forward. The public, it seems, are eager to see us take a more progressive direction, in future. But even had they not been, I had intended, myself, to—well, it hardly matters...” She trails off, lost in thought, and the room falls silent for a moment. “Anyhow, this whole business is putting him under a great deal of strain, poor man.”

Hecate rolls her eyes behind her teacup. She cannot tell if Ada is being facetious, and thinks it best not to ask.

Ada folds her hands on the table. “As I told you all last autumn, I am looking to add to our curriculum, and to our staff, if and when possible. Miss Hubble’s presence, I believe, was taken as a show of good faith by those on the Committee on Education.” She sips her tea then. “I’ve been consulting with heads from some of the other schools on the matter of progressive education initiatives we may wish to employ here…” Her eyes grow distant. “I hope to take the summer to visit with both Miss Brandywine of Wildwood and Miss Pentangle of Pentangle’s…”

She glances across at Hecate, her eyes troubled. “But, Hecate, this is not quite why I wished to speak with you.”

Feeling a sense of foreboding, Hecate sets her teacup down.

“There is a chance, you see, that if the trial were to go poorly—that is, if either the prosecution or defence were to push it in a particular direction—there is a chance that I may be removed as headmistress.”

Hecate’s fists clench. She feels the blood drain from her face. “Surely—“ She swallows. “Surely not.”

“I’m afraid the public outcry has been such that my arbitrator feels—if the court proceedings were to cast the school in any worse light than it has been already—that the Council and the Great Wizard in particular would feel they must take some sort of action to protect the legacy of the school.”

_Cowards, _Hecate thinks, bitter and more frightened than she would like to admit. _Cowards, the lot of them._

“I wanted to let you know, Hecate, because—I hope you know already—I would have no one but you take my place.”

It takes Hecate a moment to process the words.

“I’ve said as much in my Statement of Succession. I have a few distant cousins who would challenge, but my arbitrator assures me that with a Statement in place ahead of time, there can be no real dispute.” Ada presses her lips together, her eyes shining. “The line is set. The school will go to you.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to way. She opens her mouth again and again, but words seem to have left her. Tears sting her eyes.

Ada puts her hand on Hecate’s.

“I—I can’t.” Hecate breathes shakily. “Ada…”

“You can_,_” Ada says, the corners of her mouth turning up despite the sadness in her voice. “There is no one who could do it better.”

There isn’t much left to say. They sip their tea, each caught up in thought.

Eventually, there is a clattering from down the corridor. Hecate is reminded of Mildred’s presence.

Ada takes the moment to rise from the table.

“Well, I will leave you to your evening. Please give Mildred my best.”

Hecate barely manages a response before Ada is seeing herself out.

She pauses in the doorway, turning back toward Hecate. “I’ve never regretted it. Hiring you.” She shakes her head. “Not for a second.”

And with that, she slips quietly out the door, leaving Hecate to stare after her.

The bathroom door bangs open. Hecate swipes hastily at the few tears that have escaped.

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred calls. “Erm…I broke a bottle.”

Hecate stands and walks to the bathroom, feeling slightly dazed.

Sure enough, Mildred stands on a rag rug, damp from the bath and dressed in fresh pyjamas, the remains of one of Hecate’s potions vials scattered at her feet.

“Don’t move,” Hecate warns, vanishing the glass.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!”

Hecate, still feeling a bit vague, frowns at the girl. “Hmm?”

Mildred’s look is somewhat desperate. “I didn’t mean to break it! I was just looking for something for my knee, and my hands were slippery, so it slipped—“

Hecate inspects the empty place on her shelf. The Healing Balm is missing.

She narrows her eyes. “Have you hurt yourself?”

“Erm…”

Lifting a hand to her eyes, Hecate sighs. “Mildred…”

“I scraped my knee. On the wall. When I was flying.”

Hecate drops her hand, staring. “Why did you not tell me this earlier?”

“You were shouting at me!”

Hecate closes her eyes. “Come here,” she says, after a moment of silent self-admonishment. She ushers Mildred toward the sink and has her sit up on the flat stone of the washing table. “Where is it?”

Grimacing, Mildred rolls up a leg of her pyjamas—bright pink, printed with yellow ducks—to reveal a rather nasty-looking scrape on her right knee.

Hecate hisses. “Mildred!”

“Don’t start shouting again!”

Sighing, Hecate takes an antiseptic potion from the shelf and applies it to a bit of cotton. “This will likely sting. Would you like to do it, or shall I?”

“You do it,” Mildred says, shutting her eyes and screwing up her face.

Hecate quickly and carefully applies the potion. Mildred makes a whining noise in the back of her throat, but doesn’t pull away.

“Finished,” Hecate says, vanishing the used cotton. “Breathe, please,” she adds, wryly, at Mildred’s puffed cheeks and red face.

Mildred lets out her breath, opening her eyes to peer down at the cut, which is now foaming.

“That’s disgusting,” she comments, sounding pleased.

Hecate summons a spare vial of Healing Balm from her stores.

“Sorry,” Mildred says, eyeing the vial guiltily.

Hecate gathers her words carefully. “It’s no matter,” she says, applying the potion to another piece of cotton. “Next time, if you can’t reach, please ask for assistance.”

“You were talking to Miss Cackle.”

Hecate hums noncommittally, not wanting to arouse Mildred’s curiosity on a subject she doesn’t wish to explain. She lets Mildred apply the Healing Balm while she tidies the bathroom, draining the tub and rearranging the bottles of soap and picking up Mildred’s towel.

Mildred finishes her task and jumps down from the sink, hobbling awkwardly with one trouser leg rolled up above her knee. Hecate follows her from the room and, after a brief detour to inspect the half-finished mosaic drying in the larder, they sit together on the settee. Mildred digs in her schoolbag for a hairbrush, handing it wordlessly to Hecate, who begins working through the girl’s mess of tangled hair. It feels, for a moment, as if no time had passed since last summer.

Morgana joins them, arranging herself on the chintz footstool near the Victrola cabinet.

“Are you still angry?” Mildred asks softly, after Hecate has worked through roughly half of the knots. She rests her chin on her good knee, the motion nearly pulling the brush out of Hecate’s hands.

If Hecate’s honest, any emotion she had felt earlier that evening had been burned away by the utter exhaustion wrought by her conversation with Ada.

Run the school…Could she? Did she dare?

She would have been a disaster at seventeen, had Amulet’s really come to her. But now—could it be different? Could _she_?

Even if she couldn’t, there was a chance she would _have _to.

Shaking herself, Hecate brings her attention back to Mildred. She tries to put together the necessary explanation: that she hadn’t been angry, precisely, but rather more frightened; that she hadn’t meant to shout, that she’s sorry she had; that Mildred shouldn’t feel as if—

“I know I’m pants at it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hecate’s hands stop their motion.

“Flying. I know I’m awful.”

Hecate fishes for a reply that would be both true and kind.

“I know you hate when I’m not good at things,” Mildred says softly. “But I _am _trying. I don’t _want_ to be the worst at everything.”

Hecate’s heart clenches. How does she consistently do so wrong by this girl? “Mildred, that’s not—that’s not it at all.”

“Yes it is! I’ve been learning for a year now, almost, and I still can’t let go with one hand without crashing into things. Miss Drill wants me to take the Proficiency Exam this year, and I know I’m not going to pass—“ Mildred gulps in a breath of air “—and I still can’t do a Colour-change Charm without lighting my hair on fire.” She twists around, looking at Hecate despairingly. “I know you said you’ll teach me, but—what if I never get any better? What if I get to school and I’m the worst one? And everyone will know it’s because I’m not from a witching family!”

Hecate grips Mildred’s shoulder. “First, that is utter nonsense. You’re a witch, no matter who your family are. And if anyone says otherwise, they’re a fool.” Hecate sighs. “And I don’t ‘hate when you’re not good at things.’ If I ‘hate’ anything, it is that you are occasionally prone to recklessness which puts you in mortal danger.”

Mildred stares.

Hecate refuses to feel self-conscious. She’s had her fill of emotional outbursts for the evening. “I don’t particularly care how skilled you are at magic, or at flying for that matter, as long as you manage not to kill yourself in the process of learning.” She taps Mildred’s shoulder. “Now, turn around. Your hair is dripping on my silk cushion.”

And, congratulating herself on her pragmatism, Hecate finishes with the brush, weaves Mildred’s hair into a neat plait, and manages to bind it with an Ordinary hair elastic after flinging the thing across the length of the room only once.

Julie arrives just after nine. When she answers the door, Hecate thinks she sees redness in Julie’s eyes.

“How did you find it?” Hecate asks softly, as Mildred wanders about gathering her things.

Julie sighs, her gaze following Mildred across the room. “Things aren’t exactly good, just now," she says. "I mean, they’re pretty rotten, actually.” She bites at her lip, looking askance at Hecate. “But, I think…” She breathes, deep and slow. “For the first time in a long time, I really think that, eventually, things might actually turn out alright.”

She raises her eyes, and when she smiles it is with a curious, heavy sort of relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the end of part two of this story. As I did last time, I'm going to take a two-week break from posting to give myself some time to catch up on writing/editing/real-life things. You can expect the first chapter of part three to be posted on February 23.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

“All right, year three, year three, sound off!” Miss Drill shouts, walking to the front of the assembled third years with a copy of the register. The girls’ names can hardly be heard over the general hubbub in the courtyard.

It is early April, the morning of the departure for the spring half-term trip, and the entire castle hums with an excitement it hasn’t seen for nearly a year—not since the ill-fated witch-ball tournament.

Hecate hopes this occasion comes to a better end than had the last.

However, at present, things are not getting off to an auspicious start. The attending students were meant to be assembled in formation promptly at half-eight—but it is now nearly a quarter to nine and many of them are still wandering aimlessly about the courtyard.

“In your lines, _now, _girls!” Hecate orders, her gaze following a pair of giggling fourth-year stragglers.

“Sir, yes sir!” one of them says, sniggering, which sets the other into another fit of giggles.

Hecate shoots them a glare that has them both scampering into line.

Miss Drill finishes marking off the names of the third- and fourth-year girls just as Hecate begins doing the same for years five and six. Julie, currently at the head of the formation helping one of the girls fasten her cloak, has already accounted for the first and second years. They’d split up responsibility for the girls amongst the three of them, hoping that it would make managing such a large group somewhat easier. Nearly the entire school had elected to go on the trip—a feat which had never been achieved in all Hecate’s years of teaching.

“Who’s taking Mildred?”

Hecate glances up from the clipboard.

Geraldine Bluebell gestures across the courtyard at the girl in question, who is stood atop one of the stone benches near the castle wall, observing the general chaos of the morning with an air of great anticipation.

Hecate gives the register a final inspection before transferring it to her travelling bag. “Mildred will be flying Alongside with me,” she says, after deciding that Geraldine’s question was worth answering.

Mildred would coming on the trip as well; her half-term had coincided with Cackle’s’ and Julie had gotten permission to bring her along. The girl had been absolutely vibrating with excitement since receiving the news; she had spent the better part of an hour the previous Saturday telling Hecate exactly which exhibits she might like to visit again.

“And I can’t wait to see Miss Pentangle,” Mildred had said, not looking up from the inked drawing she was making for Hecate’s supply of milkweed. “I’m going to show her the room with the painting of the owl! Did you know they have owls for familiars at her school?”

Hecate had just barely avoided dropping a carton of powdered dried adders’ tongue all over the storeroom floor.

She has, over the last weeks, put a great deal of effort into maintaining her composure in that arena.

It was only three days, after all. It was…survivable.

She had managed it for the better part of a schoolyear, once.

And, anyway, whatever dramatics her personal life hold pale in comparison to the threat currently facing Ada and the school.

So, yes. She has both experience and perspective and _nothing_ will—

“Ready to depart when you are, Miss Hardbroom!” Miss Drill calls from the head of the formation, startling Hecate out of her thoughts.

Mildred jumps from her bench and comes running toward Hecate across the grass, broom held in an absurd position over her head as if she means to throw it like a javelin.

At the very least, Hecate thinks, she is not dragging it through the mud.

When she reaches Hecate’s side, Hecate does the necessary spells to bind Mildred’s broom to her own. Until Mildred passes her Broomstick Proficiency Exam, she must fly Alongside an examined flyer on journeys longer than a quarter mile, or those which require an altitude exceeding thirty feet—both of which were the case on this morning’s flight.

“Do I still have to steer it, when we’re flying?” Mildred asks, hooking her rucksack more securely over both shoulders. Her scarf gets caught in one of the straps. She tugs at it insistently, tightening it further around her neck.

“Come here, you foolish girl, before you strangle yourself,” Hecate says, turning Mildred away from her and working the scarf out of the metal clasp where it had caught. “No, you won’t have to steer. That is—as I have explained to you before—the entire point of flying Alongside.”

Hecate frees the scarf, and Mildred turns back toward her, squinting up at her in the morning sunlight. “So I just have to hang on and try not to fall to my death.”

Hecate raises her eyebrows.

Mildred shrugs. “That’s what Miss Bat said. She said the first time she ever flew Alongside, she nearly fell into the Thames. Only her mum noticed just in time and saved her. But she was a lot younger than me, when that happened.” Mildred puts on her flying gloves—a Yule gift from Miss Drill. “What if you crash your broom? Will I have to crash too?”

Hecate hears a snigger from the sixth-year ranks ahead of her. She gives Mildred a light glare, adjusting her own gloves and hat. “As I _will not _crash my broom, that is of no concern.”

She waves her hand, causing both hers and Mildred’s brooms to rise off the ground. They mount—Mildred with her customary lack of grace—and Hecate nods to Miss Drill.

“Right, you lot! Mount your brooms!” Miss Drill commands, her voice carrying throughout the courtyard. “Remember, feathered v-formation! Keep in each other’s windbreaks! The heading is north by northwest! If you get separated, find the nearest open space and land! We’ll come find you! Do not—I repeat, do _not—_attempt a tracking spell yourself!”

Looking around the courtyard, Hecate feels a little thrill of fear. There were nearly eighty young witches to shepherd from here to the train station, and then onto two successive trains, and then to their lodgings, and finally to the museum tomorrow morning. It was difficult enough to watch over them when they were all contained in the same castle—how much more difficult it would be when they had the whole of the Ordinary world in which to disappear.

She feels suddenly lightheaded.

At the front of the group, Miss Drill and Julie mount a tandem broomstick, Julie settling carefully behind Miss Drill on the elongated handle. Julie turns over her shoulder and gives Mildred a thumbs-up—which Mildred returns, grinning.

Miss Drill sets her shoulders. “Ready—and! 3! 2! 1!”

They kick off the ground, rising into the sky high above the castle.

Hecate hears Mildred give a little gasp beside her. She turns to see her clutching her broom, wide-eyed and white-knuckled. At first, Hecate thinks the girl must be frightened.

Then Mildred looks at her, a look of such exhilaration on her face Hecate’s breath almost catches.

“I’ve never been up this high before!” Mildred exclaims, her voice caught on the breeze. She laughs. “It’s _brilliant! _Miss Hardbroom, do you feel like this all the time, when you fly? Like your stomach’s falling through your feet?” She brings her shoulders up by her ears, grinning up into the clouds. “I love flying!” she shouts into the sky.

Hecate’s heart aches with some gripping feeling.

“Turning, north by northwest!” Miss Drill calls.

Hecate dips her shoulder, angling her broom handle toward the tail of the broom on her right wing as the formation takes their heading. Mildred’s broom follows suit beside her.

The day is clear and bright and unseasonably warm for early April. A breeze tickles at Hecate’s cheek, the air scented with the perfume of growing things.

She flicks her gaze to Mildred. The girl cannot seem to stop smiling.

The morning warms by the minute. As they fly over the patchwork countryside, a sweet sort of pleasantness fills Hecate’s chest—something that, were it to settle, she might call joy. She grips the warm, smooth wood of her broomstick and lets herself notice the deep blue of the sky, the green rush of the earth below her, the feel of the sweet-smelling wind tugging at her clothes.

It is the first truly springlike day of the year, and there is a sort of bone-deep relief at being outside under a finally-warm sun.

A few of the girls let out whoops of delight when a flock of songbirds passes them in the air.

“Eyes ahead!” Hecate orders, though there is no real bite in it.

**

Julie and Miss Spinner-Schmidt had selected a train station roughly halfway between Cackle’s and Pentangle’s, so that the students from the two schools might start their journey together. The Cackle’s group arrive at their destination a little over a quarter of an hour after they had departed the school, landing in an empty alleyway across from the station. Protected by their brooms’ cloaking spells, the girls are invisible and inaudible to the Ordinary public—though not, apparently, to the rather startled cat who leaps behind a rubbish bin at their arrival.

Mildred dismounts clumsily, and Hecate ends the Alongside charms on her broomstick before shrinking it and tucking it into the pocket of her cloak along with her own. She and Miss Drill then pass through the rapidly-disintegrating formation, doing the same to all of the girls’ brooms. In the ensuing chaos, a pair of first years organize an effort to lure the frightened cat out of its hiding place using bits of breakfast toast they’ve secreted away in their pockets, and have to be put off several times by both Hecate and Miss Drill before they finally return to their classmates.

When all brooms have been stored safely away, Julie takes up a position at the head of the group. She leads them all out of the alleyway and asks the girls to remember what they’ve learned about Ordinary traffic signals and street crossings. A few of the younger girls squabble over the privilege of pressing a button on a pole.

“Now: watch for the green man!” Julie calls.

Bewildered, Hecate peers around for such a person, but cannot see anyone.

Suddenly, the girls begin crossing the street. Hecate nearly shouts at them—but the automobiles coming towards them have stopped, signalled by a red light Julie points out as they cross. When she has a moment to recover herself, Hecate believes she recalls seeing such a system in the village near Cackle’s, though she frequents it so rarely—and hardly ever on foot—that she can’t be sure.

Mildred walks along at Hecate’s side, apparently unperturbed by the noise of the road, or the maze of crossings Julie leads them through, or the loud argument taking place near the train station entrance concerning the right one woman has to park her automobile in a space another woman had seen first.

The station they enter is small, brick-walled and tile-floored and odd-smelling. Their group fills nearly the whole of the ticket hall. The girls are briefly overawed by the sight of what Julie calls an ‘automatic door,’ forming a jumbled mass in the centre of the hall as they all turn to watch it close behind them—and then open, close, open, close, as one of the second years darts back and forth in front of it.

“Verona Alistair!” Hecate shouts, once she deduces that the proximity of the girl must be causing the door to open. “Stop that at once!”

Making a face, Verona sulks away to join her schoolmates, who are beginning to take in the rest of the station with a gormless wonder that makes Hecate fear for their Exposure.

“I’ve been on trains before,” Aurora Wentwhistle is saying to Imogen Treewitch. “My nan lives in an Ordinary village.”

“Look! Look! It says you can go into this little room and take photos!” Olive Ingleside exclaims, pointing at a booth with a man’s smiling face plastered across the side. “Can we? Miss Hubble?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t all fit in there,” Julie jokes, fishing around in her handbag.

“Pardon me, madam.”

“Look!” Flora Trellis shouts. “It says there’s a lift! A real, actual lift!”

“I say—_pardon me._”

“Miss Hardbroom.” Mildred taps at Hecate’s arm.

Hecate turns to see an elderly man staring at her. He has somehow made his way through the throng of schoolgirls to where Hecate is standing, pressed as close to the wall of the station as possible.

“Pardon me,” he says, once again. “I’d like a schedule.”

Hecate frowns at him. What was she meant to do about it?

“You’re blocking the way,” Mildred says, in what she probably means to be a whisper but decidedly is _not._

Cheeks heating, Hecate steps aside. The man reaches past her to retrieve a folded paper from a wire shelf.

“Good day,” he says, inclining his head at her.

Hecate nearly brings her palm to her forehead before she remembers herself.

“Good day,” she manages weakly, watching him disappear into the crowd.

A crash sounds. Belinda Boxwood has managed to knock a signpost to the floor.

“Olive shoved me!” she complains to Miss Drill, who has hurried over to right the sign.

“I did _not. _You stood on my foot!”

“Quiet, both of you,” Miss Drill admonishes, glancing nervously over her shoulder. She looks as wary as Hecate feels. At this rate, they’ll have Exposed themselves to the whole of Britain before the morning is out.

“Miss Hubble, what’s ‘_WH Smith’?” _Addie Coppercauldron asks over the hubbub, peering over at the marquis on the far wall.

“A newsstand,” Julie says, still fishing through her bag.

“What’s that mean?”

“Remember, we’ve talked about them in class. They sell newspapers and magazines to the passengers.”

“And sweets?” Imogen asks. “It says sweets.”

“Yes, and sweets. But—“

“Excuse me!” A uniformed woman waves from under a sign that reads _TICKETS. _“Madam! Are you a school group? Excuse me!”

Hecate realizes with a start that the woman is trying to address her.

“Miss, have you lot got your tickets?” the woman asks, looking harried. “If you have, would you please go and wait on the platform? You’re blocking the entrance.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to say.

Julie pulls an envelope from her handbag. “Yes, sorry! Right here!”

More slowly than Hecate would have liked, Julie explains to the girls that she’d purchased their tickets ahead of time, and that they’d been sent to her by Ordinary post.

“If you were to come here just by yourselves, and not in a great big group, you could go right over there to that machine—“ she points to a red box with a screen like a television “—and purchase your own tickets, just like we’ve talked about. Or you could talk to the nice woman at the ticket desk.”

Julie has the girls locate the door to the platforms and they begin filing out into the daylight once more. Hecate has to chivvy Imogen away from the newsstand, where she is attempting to purchase a packet of something called ‘Maltesers.’

“Now, look at the screen and tell me which platform we need,” Julie says, once the girls have all made it outside. The air near the tracks smells unpleasantly of soot and smoke. “Remember what we talked about in class. What do we need to know?”

“The direction!” somebody calls out.

“Well done, Penny. Our direction is Manchester Piccadilly.”

The girls peer up at the lighted sign above the platforms, apparently searching for something—but for what, Hecate doesn’t know.

“It’s platform three!”

Julie congratulates Penny Newt again and then, falling to the rear of the group next to Mildred and Hecate, she lets the girl lead everyone across the bridge over the tracks to the correct platform, where everyone gathers at the base of the stairs.

“Now, we’ve got ten minutes before the train arrives,” Julie says, stood on the steps above them. “You can take a seat on those benches, or you can stand—but remember: keep away from the edge of the platform.”

The girls break off into smaller groups, milling about the narrow space.

“How has it been, so far?” Julie asks Hecate, coming to stand next to her in a small open space near a grimy stone pillar.

Hecate taps her fingers against her timepiece. “Fine.”

“You looked a bit overwhelmed, back there.”

Hecate presses her lips together. “The girls were unruly. That’s all.”

“Alright,” Julie says.

It occurs to Hecate that Julie might have been asking Hecate about the success of the trip thus far, and not about Hecate’s own discomfort.

“You are…doing well,” Hecate says, shifting awkwardly.

Julie grins up at her. “Am I? Good. The girls seem to be having fun, I think.” She folds her arms across her chest, looking out across the platform.

Geraldine Bluebell lifts Mildred onto her back and walks the length of the platform with her singing some sort of children’s song, the trinkets on Mildred’s rucksack jingling cheerily.

Imogen discovers a glass box full of Ordinary food and manages to spend a portion of her allotted Ordinary money on a packet of Maltesers before Hecate can figure out what she’s doing and stop her.

“Miss Hubble! Miss Hubble!” Imogen calls, running off across the platform in a way that makes Hecate want to freeze her in place before she can skip right off the edge, “Look, I bought something! It said how much I should put in, so I did, and then I put in the number for the packet, and then it just dropped it off the shelf! And then it gave me more money, after!” Imogen opens her hand to show Julie a fistful of coins.

Julie laughs, and reminds Imogen how to count her ‘change,’ and explains about ‘vending machines.’ “I should have thought of mentioning them in class; it completely slipped my mind. But you’re a smart girl, figuring it out yourself!”

Imogen beams.

Hecate scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“It’s nearly time,” Miss Drill mutters, walking over to them. She looks worriedly at her watch, and then at the sign over the platform. “The Pentangle’s kids should be here by now.”

Hecate has a very strange impulse to ask her what business it was of hers.

Then, as if on cue, one of the girls shouts, “Look! I think they’re here!”

Hecate whirls around. Back across the tracks, behind the glass doors of the station, she can see the shape of a large group moving through the ticket hall.

And then—a flash of pink.

She has barely enough time to compose herself before the doors open and the children spill out onto platform one.

They’re being led by an older witch with brown skin and greying hair. On spotting the Cackle’s girls across the tracks, the witch waves to Julie and then disappears as she guides her students up the stairs and over the concrete bridge.

Pentangle’s has brought half of their students: nearly sixty children. As they file in pairs down the stairs, Hecate wonders how they’ll all fit onto the platform.

“Make room, you lot!” Miss Drill yells to the Cackle’s girls. “Move along!”

The lead Pentangle’s witch walks briskly up to the Cackle’s staff, keeping half an eye on her students as they continue down the stairs and onto the platform. “Miss Meredith Spinner-Schmidt,” she says, bowing to Hecate and Miss Drill in turn. “Well-met.”

Hecate returns her bow.

“I don’t know if Julie’s said—I’m the Ordinary Studies teacher at Pentangle’s,” Miss Spinner-Schmidt continues. “This is Mage Ives Aconite. They’re our Deputy Head.”

A short-haired, dark-skinned person in a green jumper and Ordinary denim trousers sticks their hand out to shake Dimity’s, Julie’s, and then Hecate’s hand. “Mage Aconite, pleasure.” When Hecate eyes their extended hand, they shrug. “When in Rome—or, you know, Stafford.”

Miss Spinner-Schmidt looks up. “Oh, and here’s—“

“Good morning!” a cheery voice calls. “So sorry we’re late.”

Hecate bites the inside of her cheek. It does not stop the painful lurching of her heart.

Almost involuntarily, she raises her eyes.

Pippa walks from the direction of the lift, two of her students with her. She says something to the children, and then crosses the platform to stand next to Miss Spinner-Schmidt.

Hecate has to will herself not to take a step backward.

Like all the staff, Pippa is dressed in Ordinary clothing: a floral-print blouse and a pair of deep magenta trousers that cut off above her ankles. On her feet, she wears canvas trainers like Mildred’s.

She smiles brightly, looking around at the assembled group. Her eyes pass directly over Hecate as if she isn’t there.

Hecate’s stomach clenches. She raises her chin, forcing herself to breathe evenly.

A deep, thrumming rhythm sounds in the distance.

“That’ll be the train. Everyone, stand back!” Julie calls down the length of the platform.

“Pentangle’s students! Keep hold of your partner!” shouts Miss Spinner-Schmidt.

“Remember: Pentangle’s on coach B, Cackle’s year ones through fours on C, years five and six on D! The coaches are marked with the letters!”

The students jostle each other, attempting to arrange themselves in the proper order.

Geraldine has walked back with Mildred, the girl still perched on her back. She stands between Hecate and Miss Drill, watching the train with a sort of gleeful delight that makes Hecate’s skin itch.

“Hi, Miss Pentangle!” Mildred says, smiling at Pippa over Geraldine’s shoulder.

“Hello, my dear!” Pippa says, returning Mildred’s smile warmly. “It’s very good to see you again. How are you?”

“Really, really good. I love this museum, a lot. It’s maybe my second-favourite ever.”

“Is it?” Pippa asks, her eyes dancing. “Well, then, I can’t wait.”

The ache in Hecate’s stomach deepens.

_Look at me, _she thinks, and then viciously tamps the thought down. What should she care if Pippa was happier pretending Hecate didn’t exist? Anyway, it might make everything easier if they both ignored each other for the duration of the trip—which Pippa already seems determined to do.

The train pulls into the station with a great rumbling, screeching noise that vibrates under Hecate’s skin. She is unprepared for the size of it—she knew, of course, that it would have to be large enough to accommodate all of them, but somehow did not manage to envision what that would mean. Something in her chest is arrested at the sight. All of this, and not a touch of magic. Only sparks and wires and metal wheels…

Finally, the train comes to a stop. Doors slide open at the end of each car and several Ordinary people emerge onto the platform, looking slightly startled at the number of schoolchildren waiting there.

“Hecate, would you make sure Mildred gets on the train alright?” Julie says, already edging away toward the first and second years. “I’m going to help the little ones.”

Geraldine sets Mildred down on the platform. She lifts her hand to her forehead in a salute. “See you on board, captain!”

“Aye-aye!” Mildred giggles, returning the salute.

“Quickly, now!” Julie calls to the students, most of whom are still standing dazedly on the platform, staring at the train. “Through the nearest door!”

There is a sudden frantic shoving towards the coaches.

Hecate tenses, ready with a Safety Net spell should any of the children fall into the gap between the train and the platform.

“Remember, the coaches connect!” Miss Spinner-Schmidt shouts. “Just get on and find your proper place later!”

Bodies press into Hecate from all sides. Mildred knocks into Hecate’s hip.

“Don’t shove!” Pippa calls.

Hecate puts a hand on Mildred’s shoulder and guides her toward the coach labelled ‘D,’ where she’s to sit with the fifth- and sixth-year girls.

When they finally make it onto the train, Hecate doesn’t know where to turn. The girls are blocking the aisles, sniping at each other to move, arguing over who got to sit where, the sounds of their voices magnified in the small space. Hecate looks urgently around behind her, trying to see out onto the platform and make certain all of her girls had boarded.

Apart from an Ordinary young man purchasing something from one of Imogen’s ‘vending machines’, the platform is empty.

The clock over the tracks reads 10:28. The train departs in two minutes.

“Oi! You took my seat!”

“It wasn’t _your _seat, toad brain! They’re anybody’s! Miss Hubble said!”

“It was too! I put my coat—“

“Oh, jinx your coat--!”

“Don’t say ‘jinx’! We’re not allowed to talk about—“

“Girls!” Hecate shouts, her nerves making her voice sharper than she means it to be. “Be seated. _Now.”_

The aisles clear rapidly as the girls hurry to obey, a tense hush falling.

Hecate directs Mildred to an empty seat at the back of the carriage. “Stay here,” she commands, before transferring the clipboard to hand and stalking down the aisle to take the register.

“Miss Hardbroom—“ one of the girls begins.

“_Not _now,” Hecate hisses, marking another name on the parchment with a vicious stroke of her pen.

“But Miss Hardbroom—“

“You did…erm, what we’re not supposed to do—“

“Miss Hubble said, not until we get back to school.”

Hecate raises her head, a venomous glare ready on her face.

Then she realizes what the girls are trying to say.

She’d done magic.

Without thinking, she’d transferred the clipboard from her bag.

Hurriedly, she glances around. They are travelling at an odd time of day, on an odd day of the week, Julie had said—she’d planned it purposefully—

There is no one else on the coach.

Hecate lets out a breath. Avoiding the girls’ curious looks, she collects herself enough to finish the register.

The girls are whispering amongst themselves. Hecate hushes them and walks to the end of the carriage, where she sits gingerly in an upholstered chair next to Mildred’s.

A voice sounds from nowhere. _Good morning friends—your attention, please: This is the 10:30 train to Manchester Piccadilly, calling at…_

The girls gasp. “That’s the driver talking, just like Miss Hubble said!”

Suddenly, the train lurches into motion. Several of the girls let out screams that slowly dissolve into delighted laughter.

Hecate clutches at her chair, her heart skipping a beat.

Mildred, kneeling up on her seat to look out the window, glances over her shoulder at Hecate, brow furrowed in concern.

Cheeks flushing, Hecate slowly prises her fingers from the metal armrests, folding her hands carefully in her lap.

The train builds speed as it leaves the station. Hecate can feel the wheels churning over the tracks, feel the rocking of the coaches as they turn round a bend. The town flashes by, buildings blurring together into a wall of brick and windows, power lines strung overhead like guide ropes.

A door opens to Hecate’s right. Miss Drill appears.

“All accounted for on our end,” she says. “Julie wants me to tell you she’ll come find you as soon as she’s finished speaking with Miss Spinner-Schmidt.”

Hecate nods.

“We’re changing trains in Stockport, remember, everyone,” Miss Drill says to the coach at large, before turning back to Hecate. She sighs, shaking her head. “I don’t know what we were thinking, taking this many kids on Ordi—“ she cuts herself off “—erm. Trains. Across the country. Someone’s bound to end up halfway to Paris without our noticing.”

Hecate privately agrees, but says nothing.

“Well, I’m off. Have a nice trip.”

“Bye, Miss Drill!” Mildred says, plopping down in her seat and waving.

“Bye, kiddo.”

The train makes frequent stops; after the third, Hecate stops startling at the driver’s voice announcing the stations.

Mildred rustles through her rucksack, pulling out a drawing pad and pencil. She begins sketching. At first, Hecate cannot tell what it is meant to be. Then she realizes: it’s what Cackle’s looks like from above.

A trolley rolls through the aisle. Some of the girls purchase small things to eat with their allotted funds. Thankfully, the woman pushing the trolley does not comment on what Hecate is sure must be very clumsy attempts at handling Ordinary money.

Mildred hands Hecate two coins and asks for something called ‘Jammy Dodgers.’

Hecate raises her eyebrows.

“Mum said I could,” Mildred insists.

Reluctantly, Hecate stumbles through the transaction and hands Mildred a packet of what turn out to be sandwich biscuits.

The door slides open just as the trolley rolls away, and Julie steps into the coach.

“Hello, there,” she says, smiling at Mildred and Hecate as she takes a seat across the aisle.

“Miss Hubble?” Tara Ronan says, rising up in her chair and turning to lean her elbows on the headrest. “Are all Ordinary doors automatic?”

Hecate widens her eyes at the girl, trying to communicate the need for silence on the topic of ‘Ordinary’ things.

“No, not every door is automatic,” Julie says, calmly. She points to the one she’s just come through. “That one isn’t, for example.”

“Why not?”

“You know, I don’t actually know. Probably because it would be too expensive to build them all that way. And because some doors are too old to have been built that way in the first place.”

“Oh,” Tara says, munching on what looks to be a chocolate bar.

“D’you want a biscuit, Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred asks, holding the packet out to Hecate.

Hecate eyes it warily.

“It’s only jam in the middle. It’s nice.”

Making a face, Hecate gingerly removes a biscuit from the packet, hesitating a moment before taking a bite.

The door slides open again.

Hecate chokes.

Pippa enters the coach, one hand on the shoulder of a small Cackle’s first year called Willa Inkwell.

“Hello, Julie,” Pippa says pleasantly.

“Hello yourself.”

“Miss Hubble?” Willa asks, walking awkwardly up to Julie’s chair through the motion of the train. “I need the loo.”

“There’s one in your coach,” Julie says, pointing back over her shoulder in the direction Willa had just come from. “It’s the little room that says W.C. Do you remember, we talked about it in class?”

Willa nods, flushing. “Yes, but—but I pulled the door, and it won’t open.”

“Hmm. Is the sign green or red?”

“Green.”

“Did you pull the door like this—“ Julie pulls her fist in toward her “—or like this?” Julie moves her fist from left to right.

“Out.”

“Why don’t you try sliding it, and see if that works? Usually train toilets will have pocket doors—that’s where the door slides into the wall—to save space.”

Willa nods again.

“Do you think you might find your own way back, Willa?” Pippa asks. “I’d like a word with Miss Hubble.”

Willa puts on a determined face and assures Pippa that she can.

Pippa shifts an attaché case from her shoulder and settles into the seat beside Julie’s. Drawing a small notebook from the case, she strikes up a quiet conversation with Julie concerning tomorrow’s logistics. The two women talk amicably, Pippa’s laughter drifting through the coach now and again, though Hecate cannot see what is so amusing about museum exhibits.

Pippa never once spares a glance in Hecate’s direction.

Having finished her biscuits, Mildred returns to her drawing, her elbow occasionally knocking against Hecate’s as she moves the pencil across the page.

Shafts of dusty sunlight drift through the windows of the train. The girls pass a packet of Ordinary crisps between them, over headrests and through the gaps between seats, exclaiming over the apparently sour flavour. Onata LaRue and Penny Newt begin a game of witching draughts that fast dissolves into argument. Tara shouts at them to be quiet, waving a copy of _The Witches of Blackstone Castle _in the air and asking them how she is meant to read with them shouting.

“You’re shouting, too, if you haven’t noticed!” Penny shouts.

“Enough!” Hecate shouts, which stops the shouting.

She thinks she hears a noise of amusement from across the aisle, and just manages to keep from glancing at Pippa.

Partway to Stockport, an Ordinary woman boards the train. She sits few rows ahead of the girls, knitting the sleeve of an orange jumper and doing what Hecate feels is an admirable job ignoring the girls’ obvious staring.

A few minutes into her journey, she drops her wool, which rolls away down the aisle.

Hecate watches, tense, as Geraldine Bluebell reaches down by her feet to pick it up. But all the girl does is walk carefully back down the moving train, winding the slack as she goes, to return it to its owner.

“Thank you, my dear,” the woman says. “I was about to get it myself, but it takes me a minute to get moving, at my age.”

“You’re welcome,” Geraldine says. And to Hecate’s surprise, she sits down next to the woman.

“Are you all on a school trip?” the woman asks, adjusting her spectacles and picking her knitting back up again.

Hecate clenches her hands, willing Geraldine to be sensible, for once.

“Yes, ma’am,” Geraldine says.

“Oh? And where are you going?”

“Stratford Hall. It’s a museum in Derbyshire.”

“How wonderful,” the woman says, stitching another row. “And your school—is it far from here?”

“Not really. It’s actually two schools, on this trip. Well—sort of. It’s nearly all of ours and half of another.”

“My goodness. What brave teachers.”

Geraldine giggles. “I guess so.”

They continue talking. Geraldine introduces the woman to Penny and Onata and Tara, who have come to investigate.

Hecate has to restrain herself from marching across the train to order them to sit down again before they say something they shouldn’t.

She glances across at Julie, who is bent over a piece of Ordinary paper, pointing out something to Pippa.

_Pay attention, _Hecate wants to say. _Pay attention! The girls are halfway to Exposing us all, and you’re not even paying attention._

“Hecate.”

Hecate startles.

Julie is looking at her. “They’ll be fine,” she says, gently.

Pippa’s eyes drift between them, an unreadable expression crossing her face.

Hecate opens her mouth to protest—

and is cut off by a shriek of laughter.

The Ordinary woman has cut off a bit of yarn and is teaching the girls to play cat’s cradle. Tara’s hands are exceptionally tangled. Penny tugs and tugs at the yarn, but it is obviously a hopeless endeavour—she can’t see for laughing.

“No, it’s up, _then _over, Penny!” Geraldine is saying, leaning imperiously over the back of the seat. “Up, _then _over!”

“I’d give it up if I were you,” Onata says. “Penny’s got no sense of direction.”

“Oi!”

“I think this calls for reinforcements,” the woman says, and Tara holds out her hands so that the woman can untangle them.

Hecate watches the scene unfolding, an uncertain feeling blossoming behind her lungs, crowding out the air.

The train rumbles around a turn.

**

By the time they arrive at their lodgings—a wild dash through Stockport station, another train, a short broomstick flight, and a long walk into town later—Hecate is beside herself with exhaustion.

“We’re on the second floor,” Julie says, hurrying back from the reception desk at the youth hostel with several sets of keys. “Pippa, most of your lot are in the green dormitory room. Dimity, ours are mostly in the red. They’ve had to put some of us in the smaller rooms as well. I’ve decided to let the older students—“

Some of the upper years let out a cheer.

“_Quiet!” _Hecate demands, her head pounding. The hostel lobby smells of Ordinary cleaning fluid, the false-floral scent beginning to turn her stomach. Outside the narrow front windows, Ordinary automobiles rush past, their headlamps flashing in the dusk.

“—some of the older students take those. Meredith, if you could distribute these.” Julie hands Miss Spinner-Schmidt three sets of keys, and then hands three more to Hecate. “And, Hecate, if you’ll take those. There are four beds to each of the smaller rooms, so that still leaves eight of our upper-school girls still in the big dormitory.”

There is a sudden rush to the stairwells, the students tripping over each other in an effort to stake out their sleeping arrangements.

Hecate nearly lifts a hand to transfer herself when she remembers where she is.

Exhaustion rising, she walks in the direction of the lift indicated by a sign overhead, eager to avoid the massacre currently underway on the stairs.

Mildred, following beside her, presses a button on the wall. It glows red.

“—and it looks like the bathrooms are just down the hall.” Pippa’s voice is saying, the sound echoing through the hostel lobby. Hecate’s shoulders tense as she approaches from behind. “The signs should be brailled, Miss Spinner-Schmidt says, but if you have trouble, I don’t think a spell or two would do any harm.”

Hecate narrows her eyes at that but doesn’t turn around.

The lift chimes, and the doors open.

The room inside is overbright and quite small. Hecate walks in, too tired to really think about being apprehensive. Mildred follows in behind her, and then Pippa, and Julie, and two of Pippa’s students.

Julie presses the number ‘2’ on a panel of buttons. The doors close again.

The room lurches, sending Hecate stumbling backward. She grabs at a metal rail along the wall.

It was apparently too much to hope for that Pippa wouldn’t notice. She glances briefly at Hecate, her expression odd, before looking quickly away again.

Upstairs, the girls are an absolute nightmare—shouting at each other, whinging at Hecate, bodily blocking the doors to the coveted small rooms to prevent each other’s entry. Deprived of a silencing spell, Hecate snaps her fingers in front of their noses and glares them into submission. In the end, head aching and feeling particularly nasty, Hecate sends the loudest complainers to the large dormitory room with the younger girls and divides the rest among Cackle’s’ three allotted small rooms at random, taking brief note of the arrangement on the register and decidedly ignoring any protest.

Julie and Miss Spinner-Schmidt have arranged for the delivery of food. Once they’ve all settled their things, the students are notified to gather for an evening meal in the hostel’s ground-floor common area: a large, musty-smelling room with bright yellow walls and odd-looking grey carpet. The space is cramped with haphazard arrangements of mismatched furniture; everywhere one looks, bookshelves and end tables and coloured cartons spill over with Ordinary games and other amusements.

Hecate finds herself sitting with the rest of the staff at a long plastic table set up along the back wall near an Ordinary coffee machine. The students, spread out at similar tables and on patterned armchairs and in the open spaces on the floor, eat cheerily from plates made of paper. Miss Spinner-Schmidt—to Miss Drill’s particular delight—had ordered pizza and some sort of chicken, which the children seem to enjoy.

Hecate, who had not really eaten on the train, nor at Stockport station when the group had stopped for lunch, convinces herself to take a bite of her pizza. It is…not terrible. The pounding in her head recedes.

Beside her, Julie laughs at Pippa, who has managed to drop most of the cheese from her pizza onto her plate.

“Oh, bats!” Pippa says, laughing herself. “And here I am, fresh out of vanishing spells.”

“I suppose you’ll have to make do with the Ordinary method,” Julie says.

“What’s that?”

“Reconstructive surgery,” Julie says, directing Pippa to arrange the cheese back onto her crust.

And, as daintily as possible, Pippa does.

Across the table, Miss Spinner-Schmidt is talking interestedly to Audrey Moon, whom she had apparently known for years, having attended the same place of worship as Audrey’s family since Audrey was small.

“—and Dad always sends me some, because Miss Tapioca never has any.”

“They never did when I was at school, either. You know, my friends and I used to sneak out into the greenhouses and steal some of the parsley from the herb garden.”

“Your friends were Jewish?”

“Just the one.” Miss Spinner-Schmidt grins. “The rest were along for the adventure.”

A number of the children have gathered at the far end of the room, where an entire wall seems somehow to have been made into a blackboard. Some of the children are stood on chairs, others kneeling on the floor, each scribbling on a small section of the wall. At first, Hecate thinks it must be some sort of competition they’ve invented—but after a few minutes’ observation, she realizes that they’re simply drawing pictures, passing pieces of coloured chalk between them with remarkably little squabbling. Mildred is among them, stood on a stool near the edge of the wall, drawing something with her tongue sticking out between her teeth.

With a start, Hecate realizes she is only a few inches smaller than some of the first years.

When the meal is over, Hecate, Miss Drill, and Miss Spinner-Schmidt shepherd the students upstairs while the rest of the staff remain behind to tidy the common space.

The dormitory assigned to the Cackle’s group is a single long room filled with an almost absurd number of wooden bunk beds. Less than three hours after their arrival, and the room already looks vaguely like a Sorting spell has backfired: coats and shoes flung every which way, rucksacks dropped onto mattresses or slung over bedposts, their contents spilling out onto the floor. Hecate stands near the doorway, hands at her sides, watching as the younger girls prepare themselves for bed.

Under the direction of Miss Drill, the girls shower in rotas, leaving fifteen at a time and returning precisely ten minutes later, damp-haired and bright-cheeked and giggling over the Pentangle’s students they’d spotted in the corridor.

The lights are dim, the room lit only by the Ordinary string lights hung along the walls above the top and bottom bunks. The girls talk softly to each other, sitting on one another’s beds, scampering sock-footed across the short distances between bunks, holding up mirrors while another brushes their hair, looking through books with their heads bent close together over the pages.

Geraldine and Tara, who had both been among the older girls relegated to the dormitory room, sit together on Geraldine’s top bunk, still attempting the cat’s cradle stage they’d tried to learn on the train.

“You dropped it! You dropped it!” Tara accuses, laughing, and Geraldine rolls dramatically away across the mattress.

“That’s the last of them,” Miss Drill says, walking into the room behind the first-year group.

Hecate orders the girls to their beds. After pacing the length of the room to ensure compliance, she shuts off the lights and closes the door.

She pretends not to hear the whispering that starts up immediately after the latch clicks into place.

Out in the corridor, Miss Drill sighs deeply. “Let me just say, I’ll be glad to see the back of this trip,” she says, her shoulders sagging. They watch a few pyjama-clad Pentangle’s students walk out of the bathrooms. The door to the Pentangle’s dormitory room swings open, closed, a shock of chatter briefly filling the empty corridor. “No magic. Over a hundred kids. _Trains. _And, the weirdest thing: I kept having to tell myself to walk—just _walk. _I walk everywhere at Cackle’s, unless it’s raining! It’s not like I don’t walk. But out there, I kept thinking to myself, _If you transfer now, you’ll ruin everything. _Like I was having to hold my own hand through it all, at the same time I was trying to keep track of the kids. Thank Merlin for Julie.”

She glances back at the door to the Cackle’s dormitory room. “At least they’ll have it better. Did you see them out there today?” She grins. “Fearless, the lot of them. Even little Willa Inkwell—and I swear that girl’s afraid of her own cat.” She shakes her head, her smile growing thoughtful, fond. “Yeah. Thank Merlin for Julie.”

Hecate blinks down at her. There’s a strange stirring in her chest, of the kind that’s been rising up in her all day.

Perhaps it’s only that she’s startled by Miss Drill’s speaking to her as if she were a friend.

But it isn’t just that.

She’s felt it too: what Miss Drill is talking about. Watching Willa, and Imogen with her ‘vending machine,’ and the girls on the train with the Ordinary woman, and every little moment where they’d looked unafraid—even joyful—in a strange world.

The feeling, she thinks, is a little like hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back with the first chapter of Part Three. Thanks for reading!


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

They start out early the next morning, traipsing out to the fields behind the village after a quick meal in the hostel’s canteen.

The Cackle’s formation take off first, rising up out of the fog like odd black birds, morning dew clinging to their boots and skirt hems and to the bristles of their broomsticks.

By the time both parties land, behind a hedgerow in Stratford Hall’s sprawling gardens, the sun has risen properly, as warm and bright as it had been yesterday. After shrinking brooms and reminding everyone once more of the day’s plans, the teachers organize the children as best they can and walk them across the grounds toward the manor house.

It is outright chaos attempting to get everyone through the doors and set up with visitor’s badges and maps and schedules. Several of the Cackle’s girls run off ahead of the group and have to be fetched back by Mage Aconite, who chides them cheerily.

“Oh—Mildred,” Julie says, harried, as she distributes lunch tickets to her first- and second years. “You’ll need your audio tour.”

Mildred, who is fairly shaking with excitement, bounces on her toes near Hecate’s side. She’s chosen to wear her dungarees today; the shoulder clasps jingle with her movement.

“She can some along with me,” Pippa says, over the heads of the small crowd between her and Julie. Her hair is done up in a neat twist, and she’s worn an Ordinary blazer over yesterday’s blouse, her school clipboard tucked up under one arm. “I’m headed in that direction myself.”

Mildred brightens, and skips along behind Pippa as she and two of her students walk toward the information desk.

When they return, minutes later, Hecate has just finished her last admonishments to her year fives and sixes and has sent them off—with great hesitation—to explore on their own until lunchtime.

“—really, you do?” she hears Mildred saying excitedly. She has an Ordinary audio device in her hand, a pair of headphones slung about her neck.

She’s walking back next to one of Pippa’s students, a small, pale, dark-haired girl whose white cane Mildred nearly trips over in her exuberance. Hecate believes she recognizes the girl as one of the students who'd been with Pippa in the elevator last evening.

“Yeah,” the girl says, smiling. Her own audio device sticks out of a pocket of her uniform skirt. “It brailles the words when I run my fingers over them, and then sets it back again—so I can use the same books as everyone and don’t have to buy them special.”

“I have a spell like that, too!” Mildred says, looking at Hecate across the closing space between them. The marble hall rings with her voice. “Except it reads the words out to me. Miss Hardbroom puts it on the books she wants me to read.”

“Really? I didn’t think there was one like that. Can you teach it to me?”

Mildred hesitates. “I don’t know how to do it by myself. It’s really hard. But—“ She skips ahead toward Hecate. “Miss Hardbroom!” Mildred comes to a halt in front of her. “Miss Hardbroom, this is Norah—erm. What was your surname?”

Norah giggles. “Elderflower.”

“Right.” Mildred nods. “This is Norah Elderflower. She’s from Pentangle’s. Can you teach her my reading spell?” She says to Norah, aside, “Miss Hardbroom made it for me.”

“Well-met, Miss Elderflower,” Hecate says, though she omits the bow for the sake of the Ordinary museum-goers.

“Well-met,” Norah replies.

“Unfortunately,” Hecate begins, somewhat awkwardly, “the spell in question is rather complex.”

“I can learn it,” Norah insists.

Hecate doesn’t know the girl, and so does her best to keep her temper. “It is a modified dictation jinx. It is highly unlikely that a witch of your age could manage to cast it without doing damage either to herself or to her surroundings.”

Norah frowns at her. “You could just let me try.”

“That would be unwise.” Hecate pauses. “If you would like for your parents or teachers to cast the spell for you, I could attempt to write out casting instructions, though I doubt—”

“Thanks, but I’d rather learn my spells myself,” Norah says, with an air of polite finality. She begins walking away across the entrance hall, her cane brushing the floor in broad strokes. Mildred, casting an open-mouthed look between Norah and Hecate, follows behind her.

“Norah Elderflower is one of the most talented witches in her year,” Pippa says, calmly. She’s walked up beside Hecate without her noticing.

Hecate’s cheeks burn. She clenches her fists at her sides.

“And,” Pippa continues, “like most people, I think, prefers to decide for herself when she needs the help of others.”

Hecate opens her mouth, and then closes it again. “The spell is beyond the capabilities of most adult witches, let alone those of a schoolgirl.”

“Why—because you’ve invented it?” Pippa asks after a moment, not bothering to face Hecate as she speaks. “Not all of us can equal the great Hecate Hardbroom, it’s true, but most of us seem to manage well enough anyway.”

She walks off before Hecate can devise a response, the rubber soles of her Ordinary trainers squeaking absurdly against the marble floors.

**

Hecate wanders the exhibit halls in a haze of frustration that eventually fades away into painful self-consciousness. Had she been asked, she would not have been able to say what it was she’d seen on display. She is so out of herself that she nearly collides with an older gentleman on the stairs, and then has to spend a minute in the washrooms pulling herself together.

She’ll be glad when this is all over. And then, hopefully, she’ll never have cause to see Pippa again.

The students, at least, seem to be enjoying themselves. They make up over half of the museum’s guests that day, and Hecate cannot walk into a room but see children in school dress gathered around papers in glass cases, or underneath framed portraits, or exclaiming over displays of Ordinary household items. In the museum’s basement kitchens, she discovers a mixed group of students from both schools learning how to churn butter using old wooden machines.

Just before lunch, Hecate finds herself once more in the hall of steam engine exhibits, the little model train running on its tracks overhead. Sunshine pours across the polished wooden floors, curtains of dust falling through the air along the length of the hall. Near the model of the combustion engine, she sees a familiar head of auburn hair and has the absurd urge to walk out of the room again.

Mildred is there with Norah and another child from Pentangle’s, looking very much _up to something._

Norah laughs. “Stop elbowing me, Ben, I can’t read,” she says to the third child—Ben, apparently—who is laughing as well.

He and Mildred are standing on either side of Norah, perpendicular to her shoulders, while the girl runs her hands over the little plaque in front of the engine. And Hecate understands: they are attempting to shield Norah from the eyes of other museum-goers while she uses her brailling spell.

Hecate tenses. They’re really being rather obvious and, should somebody see them, she’s not entirely sure how she would explain away the children’s actions. But, then, if she were to make a move to stop them, she risks calling attention, and could in fact become an agent of their Exposure…

As she surveys the room, however, Hecate notices that the other museum-goers seem to be deliberately avoiding looking at the children, their eyes flitting to Norah’s cane and then quickly away again.

“It’s the same as what’s on the recording,” Norah says, finally, dropping her hands and hooking the museum’s headphones back into one ear.

“Thanks,” Mildred says, as they walk toward the next display. “Sometimes it’s different. Last time I came here, they forgot to record about a whole room of portraits.”

“I can tell you when it’s different and read it to you, if you want,” Norah offers.

“Really? Thanks!” Mildred grins.

The children make their way to the next exhibit, clustered together like a little flock of geese. The other visitors give them a wide berth.

Hecate slips quietly out of the room, unseen.

**

In the canteen, Hecate exchanges her meal ticket for the group-rate lunch: a bowl of vegetable stew and a crusty bread roll. Some of the students spread their rolls with the fresh-churned butter they’d made in the kitchen exhibit, which they’ve been allowed to keep in small plastic containers.

The hall is nearly full to capacity, the noise of clattering dishware and chattering children pressing like a weight against the canteen walls, humming unpleasantly inside Hecate’s chest. Hecate carries her plastic tray across half of the room—carefully avoiding the comings-and-goings of overexcited children—before she sees an open seat.

Unfortunately, it happens to be across from Pippa.

Hecate halts in place, half considering abandoning her food and returning to the exhibit halls, or retreating somewhere outside.

“Miss Hardbroom!” Miss Spinner-Schmidt calls, waving to her. “There’s room here.”

Grimacing internally, Hecate makes her way over to the table and takes her seat.

Pippa doesn’t look up; Hecate thinks she sees a flush in her cheeks. A few curling strands of hair have fallen from Pippa’s twist, and Hecate finds herself staring at the soft way they brush against the shoulders of her jacket. Then, berating herself, she forces her eyes away.

“We were just saying how much fun this all has been,” Miss Spinner-Schmidt says, dipping her bread into her stew. “But Miss Drill mentioned you’ve been here before?”

“Yes,” Hecate begins hesitantly. “With Julie—with Ms. Hubble. And her daughter, Mildred.”

Miss Spinner-Schmidt hums. “What a sweet girl. Julie says you’ve been tutoring her in magic. You’re using the Millicent Herringbone book? _The New Elementary Spellcasting_? How are you finding it?”

Pippa’s spoon clatters loudly in her bowl. “Pardon me—clumsy,” she says, after a moment. Her voice sounds strained.

Flustered, Hecate wonders bitterly where everyone seemed to be finding the time to discuss details of her life in their conversations with other people.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the approach of two of the Pentangle’s students. Hecate recognizes one of them as the second student from the elevator last evening.

Pippa looks up. “Hello Zara,” she says to the girl from the elevator, who is looking out across the hall, a pained grimace on her face, her hands cupped over her ears. The scarlet scarf she wears bunches up under her hands. “Would you prefer to go outside for a bit?”

Zara nods and begins walking toward the doors to the garden. The other student follows behind, carrying a tray with two bowls of soup balanced precariously between a pair of bread rolls.

Hecate frowns after the pair.

“She’ll be back when it’s time to return to the exhibits,” Pippa says tightly, as if expecting Hecate to make some remark. “She knows the schedule.”

But Hecate can’t seem to tear her gaze away from Zara as she disappears into the sunlit gardens, something about her sticking in Hecate’s mind.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate turns, still caught up in thought, to find Addie Coppercauldron standing in the spot Zara and her friend had just vacated, a reticent-looking Geraldine Bluebell at her side.

“Sorry if we’re interrupting. I just wanted to ask you something. Well, show you something, and then ask—if you don’t mind?”

Hecate nods her assent. She feels Pippa’s eyes on her.

“We’ve just been in the gardens with the museum gardener,” Addie says, pulling something from her schoolbag. “Did you know they have medicinal gardens here?”

“I did not.”

“Yes, well, he was telling us how the people who used to live here would use the herbs to make teas and things when people were ill. And he gave me this book—“Addie holds out a small pamphlet for Hecate to take. The pages are oddly shiny and feel slick under her fingers. “It’s got illustrations of most of the plants in the garden, and their names, and what they were used for, and—“ she reaches over Hecate’s hands to turn the page “—it even has some of the recipes they used to use here. Treatments for headaches, and things.”

Hecate reads where Addie has indicated.

“And some of them are a bit like—erm. What we make in school,” Addie says, with a furtive glance around the canteen. “Especially the one for fever.” Addie points to the respective list of ingredients, which indeed are quite like those of a simple fever-reducing potion. “And I was thinking—it might be an interesting Year Five Project. To research Ordinary and—erm, _our_ remedies, and compare them.” She bites her lip, looking expectantly at Hecate.

Hecate doesn’t know what the girl expects her to say.

“I’m going to ask Miss Hubble too, of course,” Addie says quickly, “and she could be my primary advisor if you didn’t want—if you don’t have time—“

Hecate blinks. “No. That’s—it’s a fine idea,” she says, a little overwhelmed. Students hardly ever asked her to advise their Year Five Projects—they hardly ever did projects significantly involving Potions, at all. And when they _did_ ask her on as a secondary advisor, it was obvious that it was only because their primary advisor had made them do so, for the sake of practicality.

Addie smiles at her. “Brilliant! Thanks Miss Hardbroom!” She takes her booklet back and replaces it in her schoolbag. “Isn’t this place amazing? I’m so glad Miss Hubble thought to bring us here.”

Hecate nods vaguely.

“Well—bye!” Addie says, dragging Geraldine off by the hand.

If Hecate’s thoughts hadn’t been quite so distracted, she might have noticed Pippa looking directly at her for the first time in two days.

**

In the late afternoon, they traipse back up the sun-warmed hill to the very edge of the museum gardens, the children clumsy with laughter and high spirits.

The teachers shepherd them into their respective groups. Hecate notices Mildred still talking with Norah, who is climbing onto a tandem broomstick behind Ben.

“We’ll meet in the village—won’t we?”

“Yes, or before, when we land.”

Once back in formation and hidden by the cloaking charms on their brooms, the Cackle’s group take off in the direction of the village, the gentling light of the waning afternoon brushing warmly across their shoulders.

This next portion of the trip is what Hecate has been most nervous for. They are to let the students wander the village until dinnertime, ostensibly to allow them practice navigating the Ordinary world. But Hecate knows their minds will hardly be squarely in an academic frame, and that they are likely to spend their time attempting to weight their bags down with as many sweets and useless trinkets as they can carry—or worse, to make some silly blunder and Expose them all to an entire village of Ordinary people.

They land in a clearing above the village, shortly followed by the Pentangle’s group, and the frisson of excitement is palpable. Hecate can see the children are hardly listening to the instructions being given out by Julie and Miss Spinner-Schmidt and instead are elbowing each other and pointing eagerly toward the village, where rows of tiled roofs and brick chimneys are just visible over the copse of trees at the base of the hill.

For the next two-and-a-quarter hours, Hecate feels as if she hardly breathes. It seems everywhere she turns, schoolchildren are crowding the front of an ice cream shop or bowling their way through a bookstore or accosting some poor Ordinary person on the street to ask what she feels must be terribly strange and obvious questions. Once, she has to pull two second-year girls back from sticking the whole of their arms into what she later learns is a receptacle for Ordinary post. Soon after, she encounters a mixed group of Cackle’s and Pentangle’s students attempting to fit as many of themselves as possible into a glass box used to place telephone calls.

Julie finds her after the last, sitting on a bench outside somewhere called a ‘Pizza Hut,’ watching the coloured lights across the street move from green to amber to red and back again.

She hadn’t noticed the lights the last time she’d been here. It really is almost like magic, the way the automobiles seem to respond to the shifting colours.

“Hello, you,” Julie says, dropping down onto the bench next to Hecate. “Alright?”

Hecate hardly knows what to say—but she finds, when she inspects her feelings more closely, that she is closer to ‘alright’ than she might have expected, and so she nods.

“I’m absolutely knackered,” Julie says, sighing through a grin. “But it’s been the most wonderful day. I think it has, anyway. I was so afraid something would go wrong. There’s still time for that, I suppose, but—yeah, it’s been just wonderful, watching all of them.”

A pair of Pentangle’s girls walks by on the street opposite, hand in hand. They wave at Julie as they pass, raising a pair of tourists’ maps in the air with apparent pride. “We found the village hall!” they call, and Julie congratulates them.

Hecate thinks about what Miss Drill had said last night.

_At least they’ll have it better. _

_Thank Merlin for Julie._

Hecate looks at Julie, dressed in a faded blue blouse, messy curls coming undone from a tortoiseshell hair slide, smiling at the girls across the road, the magic of the Ordinary lights stopping traffic in front of them.

A warm, heavy calm spreads behind her ribs.

_Thank Merlin for Julie._

“Have you seen Millie?” Julie asks.

Hecate shakes her head. She’d not seen the girl at all since they’d landed.

“She wanted to show her new friends the bakery we went to last time—remember, with the iced buns?” Julie smiles. “She’s already asked if they can come visit over the summer holidays. And I hope they can, really. It’s been hard on her, not being able to invite any of her school friends up to play. None of them can even see the castle, of course. She has to keep coming up with excuses about where she lives and why they never see her at home…” Julie shakes her head. “And our girls are great, but they’ve always been—a world apart, in a way. Like older neighbours, I suppose. I don’t think she’s ever had a proper magical friend, until now. Not anybody her age, certainly.” Julie crosses her arms, a wrinkled museum guide still crinkled up in one hand.

The bells ring in the church tower. After a moment, Hecate and Julie get up from the bench and walk together to the Indian restaurant near the main square, where the students have already begun gathering.

Fitting them all inside is a task.

“It’s lucky I rang ahead!” Miss Spinner-Schmidt calls, shouting over the heads of the children as they arrange themselves around tables and into booths along the restaurant’s walls.

The teachers have a table to themselves at the back, near the kitchen door. Warm, spiced air drifts out into the restaurant proper, carrying with it the voices of the cooks and waiters, the hiss of cooking food, and the clang of dishware.

Candles flicker on the tables, the electric lighting overhead turned low and soft. Outside the wide front windows, the sun sets, colouring the cobbled streets outside a velvet blue.

“I’ve let Zara, Albert, Hajera, Tali, and a few others eat at the café down the road,” Pippa says, unfolding her menu. She slips on her glasses, which does funny things to Hecate’s stomach—she wonders if she’s getting too warm in the crowded restaurant. “Zara found the place. There’s outdoor seating, so it should be quieter, if there’s any of yours who would prefer to eat there as well.” Pippa directs the last at the Cackle’s teachers.

Julie sips her water, nodding as she places the glass back down on the table. “Yes, a few of our girls are with them.” She presses her lips together. “I’m sorry to say it didn’t occur to me to think about that sort of thing, until Meredith pointed it out.”

Mage Aconite shakes their head. “You’ve not been trained—cheers, mate—“ A young man sets a basket of flatbread on the table. Mage Aconite tears off a corner and begin eating it. “As I say, you’ve not been trained. That’s one of the thousand ways in which the Magic Council is still stuck in the Dark Ages—“

“—Hear, hear—“ says Miss Spinner-Schmidt.

“—The standards of education, first of all, were last reformed in the sixties. That’s the _eighteen _sixties. Not to mention their utter lack of supports for kids who don’t fit their extremely narrow idea of who a student of magic should be. I mean—“ they take another bite of bread, waving the rest around “—kids like Zara, kids like me, kids like your Mildred,” they say, nodding at Julie, “would hardly ever have been seen at school only ten, twenty years ago. And if they were, they would have spent the entire time trying to hide themselves away, trying to stuff themselves into the little boxes the Council makes for them. For everyone.”

Miss Drill nods.

Hecate feels eyes on her, and she looks up just in time to see Pippa glancing away. Hecate’s heart jumps gracelessly in her chest and she hastily lowers her gaze to her empty plate, her cheeks heating.

She nearly misses what's said next.

“And—I’m sorry, but it’s still like that at most schools,” Mage Aconite continues. “I’m sorry to you lot—” they say, looking around at the Cackle’s teachers “—but it is. There’s no direction coming from the Council—not that they _have _any direction to begin with. Teacher training is sporadic at best, and downright neglectful at worst. There’s some hope in the fact that half the Committee on Education been sacked since last year, and there’s been an inquest, and some of the replacements have been halfway decent—that’s mostly thanks to what happened with the tournament at yours. But bureaucracy’s slow. We’re trying to do what we can at Pentangles. Being a fee-paying school, we have a certain amount of leeway—but we don’t _want _to be fee-paying, is the thing. If schools like ours were the standard, if schools like ours could be Council-funded without being weighed down by edicts so ancient they’d spontaneously produce the Mists of Time…”

Miss Spinner-Schmidt laughs.

“Sorry,” Mage Aconite says, to the table at large, running their hand through their hair. “Just…don’t get me started.”

The food comes. Hecate takes cautious bites of curried lamb, wary of the heat—but it just sits warmly in the back of her throat, pleasant after a long day and early morning.

For a while, the table dissolves into little quiet conversations. All around them, the children eat happily, their eyes going wide with wonder as waitstaff approach each of their tables in turn balancing impossibly large trays of steaming food on their arms. A mixed group of younger students—Mildred among them—gather around the blue-lit aquarium near the restaurant’s entrance, chattering excitedly about the bright-coloured fish that flit about inside. Hecate watches them to be sure none take it upon themselves to leave the restaurant.

Mildred catches her watching and smiles, her face cast a faint, shimmering blue. She says something to Ben and Norah, who are stood on either side of her, and then picks her way across the room toward the teachers’ table.

When she gets there, she pauses to talk a moment with Julie, leaning into her side and sneaking a piece of bread from the basket near Julie’s water glass. Then she comes around the table to stand next to Hecate.

“I just thought of something,” she says, taking a bite of her pilfered bread and speaking just loud enough that Hecate can hear her over the noise of the restaurant. She leans against the table, her elbow precariously close to Hecate’s plate.

Hecate moves the plate a little to the right, clearing her throat. “What was that?” she prompts, when Mildred doesn’t elaborate. She feels the attention of the other teachers shifting towards them, even as they continue their own conversations.

“I was thinking,” Mildred repeats, casting a furtive look around. She takes a step closer to Hecate, lowering her voice. “D’you think it would help my Colour-change Charm if I thought about fish?”

Hecate, now more used to Mildred’s non-sequiturs than she had ever hoped to be, sighs, setting her fork down and wiping her hands on the cloth napkin in her lap. “If you thought about fish.”

Mildred nods. “I’ve been thinking about leaves, and things. Well, you know—” her eyes flick across the table in a way that is not at all subtle “—because Miss Pentangle’s book says it’s a Seasonal spell. And so leaves makes sense, because leaves change colour in the autumn. But—I was thinking. Spring is a season.”

Hecate gives her an unimpressed look.

Mildred giggles. “It _is,_” she says. “And loads of things change colour in the spring. Grass and flowers and stuff, and the sky gets brighter, too. And things are born, and that’s sort of like a colour-change, if you think about it kind of squinted.” She chews on her lip, looking past Hecate toward the aquarium. “And I was looking at the fish, and a lot of them look like babies—maybe they’re not, but they’re really small—and when they move it kind of makes rainbows on their skin. And so, I was thinking: what if I made an image-story about fish?”

The table has quieted a little more now, and Hecate very decidedly does not look around. “I think,” she says, after a moment, “that if it meant you were less likely to set some or all of your person on fire in the attempt, anything might be worth a try.”

Mildred brightens, tilting her head to look at Hecate. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Yes!” Mildred straightens, grinning. “Can we try when we get back? As soon as we get back?”

“Well—”

“Please!” Mildred bounces at Hecate’s elbow. “I know we were going to do the cooling spells this week, but—please! I just want to see if it works.”

And Hecate thinks about all of Mildred’s recent talk about being _the worst, _and how it had come not long after several spectacular failures at casting the Colour-change Charm—and perhaps this is something the girl needs to do, just to prove to herself that she _can. _

It isn't altogether a terrible idea.

“Alright,” Hecate relents. Then she fixes Mildred with a serious look. “But there is to be absolutely no practicing it until then. Do you understand?”

Mildred nods, eyes wide and bright.

“I mean it, Mildred. I don’t want to hear about you—setting fire to your knapsack in the night, or something equally ridiculous.”

Mildred frowns. “I wouldn’t do that!”

Hecate sighs. “I think we both know you absolutely _would _do that." She lowers her voice. "Which it why I am making myself very clear: no magic. Absolutely none. Until we get back to the castle.”

“_Fine._” Mildred makes a face. “But I wasn’t going to, anyway. I know about the Code.”

Hecate’s throat works. “Just so,” she says, a little awkwardly. She’s noticed nearly the whole table has now turned their attention to her conversation.

“I’m going to go and look at the fish some more, so I can remember them properly,” Mildred says, and then turns to Julie. “Mum, can I borrow your phone to take a video?”

Julie fishes for her phone and Mildred takes it and hurries away back across the room to the aquarium, where the gathered students are temporarily distracted from the fish by the arrival of Ordinary technology. A brief squabble breaks out over who will get to have a turn with the camera function that superimposes animal faces over one's self-portrait.

The table is silent for an uncomfortable stretch, all of the teachers returning to their food and—Hecate thinks—doing a very poor job pretending they hadn’t all just been eavesdropping.

Then, her face set as if coming to some decision, Miss Drill leans toward Mage Aconite. “I’m so sorry if this is an impertinent question, but are you—“

Mage Aconite’s mouth thins a bit. “Am I a witch or am I a wizard? No. The gender-neutral term is Mage,” they say breezily. “Maybe you missed it when Meredith introduced me.”

Miss Drill’s eyes go wide. “Oh! No, no! No, that wasn’t it at all. I mean—I didn’t know the ‘Mage’ bit before yesterday. But what I was going to ask was…well the thing is. One of my sister’s kids is nonbinary. Ruby. They’re in year three at Amulet’s, and having a pretty rough go of it.”

Hecate frowns. She hadn’t known.

Mage Aconite makes a face. “Amulet’s is…not a good school.” Their eyes flick towards Pippa, who is once more studiously avoiding looking anywhere near Hecate. What little of her expression Hecate can see is...odd. 

Hecate steels her shoulders and takes another bite of curry. It’s gone cold.

“I know,” Miss Drill says, her expression serious. “But Ruby’s dad’s mum went there, and her mum, and hers…and, you know how it is. Anyway, what I wanted to ask was…” She hesitates. “This might sound stupid. But would you mind at all if I—erm…if I told them about you? How you’re grown up and successful and Deputy Head and all? And what you’re doing at your school. I think just hearing that might…” She sighs. “It might help some. I don’t know. Tell me to sod off if you want.”

Turning around in their chair, Mage Aconite fishes for something in their rucksack. They draw out a piece of writing paper.

“Has anybody got an Ordinary pen?”

Julie pulls one from her pocket and hands it across the table.

“Cheers.” They scribble something down. “This is my post location and my mirror chant,” they say, handing the bit of paper to Miss Drill, who looks bowled over. “Tell Ruby they can write me, or mirror call if they’d like, though I know that’s a bit hard at school.” They pause, considering something. “We’ve got programming on during the summer at Pentangle’s. It’s open to kids from other schools. There’s a small fee, but we’re offering scholarships. Room and board’s covered.” They nod at Miss Spinner-Schmidt. “Meredith’s doing a course in religion and magic, and I’m doing one on queer history and magical culture. Roma—our botany teacher—is thinking of doing one on herb lore, but she’s looking for a co-teacher—” They look across the table. “Pippa, when are the dates again?”

“The first of July through the twentieth,” Pippa says, after swallowing a careful bite of chicken tikka masala.

Mage Aconite nods. “Right. And I believe applications are due—“

“—thirtieth of May,” Pippa says.

“Yeah. So if Ruby’s interested, you can write me, or they can, for the application materials.” They take another bite of rice. “It should be good. While I’m on the subject: if any of you’ve got book suggestions for a good introduction to queer stuff, aimed at kids our students’ age, I’d love anything you can give me.”

Julie looks contemplative. “Would you mind an Ordinary author?”

Mage Aconite shakes their head. “Not at all.”

Julie folds her arms across her chest. “I used to work at a bookshop when Mildred was small. There was a book there…” She takes a breath. “I think it might be just the thing. It was tremendously helpful to me, anyway. It was written for children—for teenagers, if I remember, but…” She shrugs a little. “I don’t think I’d ever heard the word ‘asexual,’ and certainly not ‘aromantic,’ not until I read that book.” She gives a tight-lipped smile. “It was like doors opening.”

Mage Aconite nods, their eyes full of understanding. “It sounds like a good one. Have you got the title?”

“I don’t remember it exactly, but I can get it to you. I’ve got the book at home.”

Mage Aconite writes out their contact information again and hands it across the table to Julie. Conversation picks up once more, this time concerning the logistics of tomorrow’s journey home. As the children finish their meals, a queue forms in the back corridor of the restaurant; they’ve discovered the bathrooms’ automatic toilets.

“Alright, you lot,” Miss Spinner-Schmidt calls, getting up from the table. “Out of there, before you cause a county-wide water shortage.”

“Miss Spinner-Schmidt?” a voice calls. “Mantosh’s put his glasses down the toilet!”

“Not on purpose!” another voice protests. “They fell!”

With a great sigh, Miss Spinner-Schmidt goes to sort things out.

“You’d think they’d never seen a loo before,” Mage Aconite comments. “Maybe we can plan our next trip for the staff toilets. It’d keep cost down, anyway.”

Julie snorts.

When the bill comes, Pippa handles it expertly. Slipping her glasses on to go over the sums, she gives the waiter a square of plastic that Hecate understands carries Ordinary money, reassuring the flustered young man that she does indeed mean to pay for over a hundred children’s meals.

They walk back to the hostel in the indigo dusk, neon signs blinking owlishly in shop windows, the spindly streetlamps spilling orange light across the pavement.

The children laugh at silly things, linking arms and tripping over each other’s shoelaces. By chance, Hecate has found herself walking at the rear of the party, along with Miss Spinner-Schmidt. And Pippa.

For the first time in a very long time, Hecate lets herself look at her properly. She moves with the same easy grace she’d had when they were young, though there are more angles to her now than there had been then, and more surety than she’d had at sixteen. The sleeves of her blazer are pushed up around her elbows, and Hecate can see the slim bones of her wrists, the glint of the silver chain and knotted string bracelets encircling them as she hooks arms with Miss Spinner-Schmidt. The gold of her hair is a soft lilac under the night sky. The sound of her laughter is something from a memory.

They arrive at the hostel, the children’s voices disappearing into the building ahead, the door falling shut behind, and Pippa reaches for it before it can close.

Hecate nearly walks into her.

For a moment, neither of them move.

Then Pippa steps quickly aside, pulling the door with her, her back pressed up against the glass. She seems almost startled, almost breathless.

The lilac curls around her face flutter softly in the wake of a passing automobile. A shriek of laughter tumbles down from an open upper-story window.

Pippa meets Hecate’s eyes.

“After you,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading--and thanks again for all your lovely comments! Things are a little busy with school at the moment, but I'm hoping to get to reply to them individually sometime soon.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Hecate walks into the Pentangle’s dormitory later that evening, searching for Mildred.

The room is the same as the one assigned to Cackle’s, apart from the colour of the walls. Through the long row of square windows in the far wall, the lights of the village shine like false stars. The room is full of noise; the children have been given a fifteen-minute warning before bed and are scrambling around packing their belongings for the journey home tomorrow.

“Harmony, have you got my maglet?” an older girl calls, as she rifles through her rucksack.

“Why would I have _your_ maglet?” Harmony answers. “I can hardly use two, can I?”

Hecate navigates the aisle between rows of bunks, looking out for Mildred.

She finds her, on a bed near the end of the left row, lying together on the bottom bunk with Norah and Ben on either side. The golden glow of the string lights catches the red of her hair, the dark shine of Norah’s eyes, the soft brown of Ben’s cheeks.

“—and Mum says next summer we can go to Italy, even though Mama gets broom-sick over the ocean,” Norah is saying.

Ben giggles. “She does? She always acts so tough.”

“She _is _tough. Except when she’s got to fly over the ocean. Last time they went to France, Mum had to keep feeding her Stomach Soothing Serum in mid-air. She brought a whole dram of it.”

Ben considers. “I guess that_ is_ being tough, really, if you go flying over the ocean even if you know it’ll make you ill.”

“Why don’t you just take a plane instead, when you go to Italy?” Mildred asks.

“You mean an Ordinary one, like an aeroplane?” Norah asks. “I dunno. It might still make her ill—the flying, you know.”

“You could take a train, then,” Mildred says. “There’s one that goes underwater, to France. And you could get to Italy from there.”

“Really?” Norah’s eyes go wide. “There’s a train that goes underwater?”

“Uh-huh,” Mildred nods, grinning. “I’ve never been, but I bet it’d be really cool.”

“Yeah, that would be the bats!” Ben says. “Norah, you’ve _got _to tell your mums.”

Mage Aconite passes Hecate by, carrying a small vial of potion toward the bed where the three children lie.

“Potion time,” they say, holding the vial out to Ben, who sits up and takes the potion in one gulp.

“Eugh,” he grimaces.

Mage Aconite makes a sympathetic face. “Sorry. Still working on the flavouring. I tried the grape, but it did something to the potency I didn’t like, so it’s back to the usual formula for now.” They hand him what looks like a butterscotch sweet from their pocket.

Ben takes it by rote and pops it in his mouth.

It’s clever, Hecate thinks, the butterscotch. The ingredients would be non-reactive with most heat-prepared potions; it could be taken safely as a palate cleanser without altering the potion’s effectiveness.

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred asks, sitting up and spotting Hecate.

Hecate blinks, clearing her throat. “You mother was looking for you. She’d like you to prepare for bed.”

Mildred sighs, bids her new friends goodnight, and heads reluctantly toward the door.

Hecate follows, Mage Aconite by her side.

“You know, I wanted to say: it’s been great to finally meet you,” Mage Aconite says, picking up discarded bath towels from the floor as they go.

Hecate frowns at them.

“I teach potions,” they explain, shoving the towels down the laundry chute by the door. “My upper-year kids study your bat drool thesis. I have them make their own experimental modifications based on your amplification formula.” They grin. “They all love it. Usually it’s just for laughs—modifying hair-growth tonic, things like that. But some of them get really into it. A few years ago, one of the kids did a modification of a calming potion. It puts you straight to sleep, without the usual addictive effects of standard analgesic potions. The student’s at Weirdsister now, studying to be a healer. I’m hoping they’ll get the paper published.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to say.

“Five minutes, kids!” Mage Aconite calls to the dormitory before stepping out into the corridor with Hecate. “But even without all that, I’d still have wanted to meet you,” they say. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Hecate wonders what Julie’s told her.

“Pippa doesn’t talk about Amulet’s, much,” Mage Aconite says, and Hecate’s heart seizes. “Mostly when we’re trying to figure out what _not _to do. It’s a pretty good case study for that—the worst case, if you will. No offense.” They walk together down the corridor, the Ordinary light fixtures flickering overhead. From a door on the right, Hecate can hear Miss Drill shepherding the Cackle’s girls into bed. “Anyway, sometimes she’ll get into a mood and she’ll start telling me about the scrapes you two used to get into.” Mage Aconite grins, their pale green eyes dancing. “My favourite is probably the time you set the library drapes on fire trying to practise—what was it, again?”

Hecate swallows. “A tail-trimming charm,” she says faintly, her fingers tapping against her timepiece. “For our broomsticks.”

She hadn’t thought…she’d never _dared _think…

But Pippa had remembered.

She’d remembered. She’d thought of her, perhaps. She’d _spoken _of her to other people…

“Right!” Mage Aconite laughs. “And then you tried to put it out with a Fountain spell and got the librarian straight in the chest with it when she came to see what all the fuss was about. From what Pippa says, she sounds like a right tosser, so I’d say it served her right.”

_That was an accident, _Hecate wants to say, her head swimming.

They stop outside the door of the room Mage Aconite shares with the other Pentangle’s teachers.

Mage Aconite looks contemplative.

“I suppose you heard what we were saying at dinner—”

Hecate stills. There had been a great many things discussed at dinner, most of which had made her feel as if she’d never properly thought about anything before.

“—about our summer programme,” Mage Aconite says. “I’ve been wanting to invite you to come and teach a course one of these years. Pippa’s always said you were too busy—”

Hecate frowns.

“—But I thought, if I could give you enough advance notice of the dates, that you might be willing to set aside some time for us? It’s only three weeks. And you wouldn’t have to be in residence, if you didn’t want, so you could have your mornings and evenings to yourself. We’ve already got the courses mostly set for this summer, of course, but maybe next year?”

Hecate tries to imagine herself in the position of teaching at Pippa’s school—a difficult task, given she’d never even seen the place. But perhaps if…

No.

No. Had Pippa wanted it, she would have asked Hecate herself. And obviously—_obviously_ she did not want it.

Hadn’t she said only this morning…_Not all of us can equal the great Hecate Hardbroom…_

Even had she not hated Hecate on principle, Pippa clearly still thought her too proud, too callous, too jealous of her own ideas...

And that was the truth, wasn’t it?

All the thought put into the curriculum at Pentangles, all the care given to its students, all the bright-eyed passion apparent in its every working—that was Pippa. And, though Hecate has known them only a few days, it was clearly also Miss Spinner-Schmidt and Mage Aconite, and likely every other person Pippa had chosen to involve in her school.

It was not Hecate.

It seemed foolish even to think of it.

Of course Pippa wouldn’t want it. Of course she had probably made every excuse to Mage Aconite to avoid extending the invitation.

Hecate feels her cheeks heating.

Mage Aconite is watching her, still waiting for an answer.

Hecate swallows. “No,” she says. “I think not.”

Mage Aconite sighs. “Alright. Well. Worth a shot, anyway.” They give a sort of grimacing smile. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Hecate whispers.

The door to the Pentangle’s room opens, shuts.

How ridiculous, Hecate thinks, curling her hands into fists. How ridiculous to let some brief..._delusion_, some vague mention of childhood misadventures distract her from the evidence given by Pippa’s every interaction with her since their reacquaintance in October.

_She despises you, you fool, _Hecate thinks viciously, stalking off in the direction of her room. _You made certain of it. Stop trading on daydreams and bear the consequences._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, there are about ten chapters left in the story--possibly slightly more, depending on how events fall/if I need to break things up for pacing reasons. I plan to continue with weekly posts, but March is a very busy month at school, so I may need to take another break before the story wraps up. (I'll let you know if that's the case).
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hecate doesn’t remember if she sleeps.

She watches the sun rise through the small window in the hostel room. When soft light begins to spill across her blankets, she climbs out of bed and dresses in the small en suite bathroom, careful not to wake Miss Drill or the Hubbles, asleep in the other beds. She walks downstairs, her footsteps echoing like hammer strikes in the empty stairwell.

The common space is full of quiet conversation, despite the hour. The canteen has yet to open; several Ordinary people have gathered around the coffee pot at the back of the room, whispering to each other about the location of the paper filters. A small group sit in front of the television watching a man talk about the day’s weather.

Hecate seats herself on a couch in an empty corner, her attention drifting.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate starts, her eyes flying open. She hadn’t realized she’d shut them.

Mildred stands in front of her, peering at her curiously. “Did you fall asleep sitting up?”

Hecate doesn’t care to answer, so she asks, “Where’s your mother?”

“Still sleeping. Miss Drill is, too. But I heard you get up and then I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I just got dressed and came down here.”

Hecate feels a prickle of guilt. “I apologize for waking you.”

Mildred shrugs. “I don’t mind. I couldn’t really sleep, anyway. I have excited belly about today, I think, even though we’re leaving. Mum and Miss Pentangle said it was alright if I sat with Ben and Norah on the train, and Norah said they could show me how to make string bracelets. Her and Ben make them all the time at school, and some of the other kids trade them things for them. Last week Ben got a whole box of cherry chocolate cauldrons off an upper-school girl called Titania, just for making her matching ones for her and her girlfriend. You can put spells in them—in the bracelets, did you know? Like warming spells and things. They wear off after a bit, but you can. But we won’t do it on the train, I promise.”

Hecate’s head feels so heavy—heavy and full. She’s not sure if she’s really capable of following Mildred’s conversation at the moment, but she nods anyhow.

“D’you remember when we made cat toys, last summer? I don’t have the things to make them, here, so I can’t show Ben and Norah now, but if they come visit in the summer, could we make them?” Mildred asks. “They haven’t got cats at Pentangle’s, but Norah’s mums have a cat called Beezle—well, he was really called ‘Beetle,’ but when Norah was little she couldn’t say it properly, and so now they all call him that instead.” She takes a breath. “Oh! And could you please, please do the hair loops on me? The plaited ones?” She sticks a hand into the pocket of her denim trousers. “I’ve got a comb, but I only have bobbles, not ribbons or yarn like you used last time. Do you still think it would work? I want to show them to Norah—and Ben, too, but his hair’s too short to braid like that, so I guess it maybe wouldn’t matter to him as much.”

Hecate blinks.

Mildred is holding out a small plastic comb and two mangled Ordinary elastic bands—one pale pink, another pale blue—of the kind used to bind hair.

“Please, _please_,” Mildred asks, bouncing on her toes. “I won’t bother you again all day, I promise.”

Hecate swallows. “You’re not…” she sighs. “You’re not a bother, Mildred.” She raises a hand to her temple. “I’m just…not entirely awake.”

Mildred hesitates. “So, should I maybe ask another time?”

Hecate shakes her head. “No, it’s alright,” she says, gesturing vaguely to the elastics. “Give them here.”

Mildred’s eyes light up with a smile that makes Hecate’s chest warm.

She ducks her head against the feeling, waving for Mildred to climb up onto the couch next to her. Taking the comb from Mildred’s hand, she begins working it through the girl’s hair.

Mildred continues chatting to Hecate about her new friends—about Ben’s parents’ bakery and Norah’s mothers’ disastrous purchase of a self-stirring cauldron—and Hecate finds herself drifting again.

“—and so they had to get somebody in to put the roof back on,” Mildred is saying, twisting the pink elastic around her fingers. “And—oh, hi Miss Pentangle!”

Hecate freezes.

Pippa, who had just entered the common area, looks caught-out, a startled, desperate sort of expression crossing her face as she spots Mildred and Hecate on the sofa.

She recovers quickly. “Hello, Mildred.” She smiles a little, only a hint of strain in her voice. “Have a good sleep?”

“Sort of,” Mildred says, shrugging. The girl tilts her head thoughtfully at Pippa. The motion jostles Hecate’s hands. “Have you?”

With a wary look in Hecate’s direction, Pippa crosses her arms over her chest. “Sort of,” she says, with an ironic twitch of her lips. Her eyes look red-rimmed. She sits in one of the chairs a little distance away.

Hecate averts her eyes. She attempts to continue plaiting, which suddenly seems like an absurd thing to be doing in present company. Heat rises to her cheeks; she feels slightly unwell.

Abruptly, Pippa rises and walks to the opposite end of the room, where the Ordinary people have apparently managed to get the coffee machine working. She falls into pleasant conversation with them, filling a paper cup with coffee and stirring in a bit of sugar with a funny red stick.

“Here,” Mildred says, handing an elastic over her shoulder as Hecate reaches the ends of her hair.

Hecate attempts to fold the plait up under itself and to bind it in place—a much more difficult task with an elastic band than with a piece of yarn. The result is messy, and the plait comes half-undone, and Hecate repeats the attempt twice more before she manages it.

Pippa watches them from the near corner of the room, sipping slowly at her coffee and avoiding Hecate’s eyes.

Hecate grits her teeth. She can feel Pippa’s questions pressing up against her skin.

Is it such a surprise that she can treat someone gently?

(It is. She knows it is. She knows—)

The corridor outside fills with the sudden noise of voices and footsteps: the children have come down for breakfast.

In the canteen, Hecate pokes absently at a bowl of sugared porridge. Mildred sits at a table across the aisle, one elbow in her marmalade toast, grinning from ear to ear as Ben takes a bit of fraying green ribbon from between the pages of a book, holds it out for Norah to cut in two with a pair of string-entangled sewing scissors, and ties each half into Mildred’s looped plaits. The effect is decidedly unkempt-looking, but Mildred seems delighted, and Hecate wonders at the girl’s skill for finding wholehearted care in imperfect attempts to provide it.

Afterwards, following a half-hour’s shouting and whinging, they manage to gather the children and their belongings and begin the long slow walk into the hills behind the village.

Mist hangs low in the dreary morning air. Hecate’s trouser cuffs soak through from the dewy grass.

“—I wouldn’t have—” Mage Aconite is saying in a low voice, somewhere ahead to Hecate’s left. “You know I wouldn’t have, if I’d known everything. I just think—"

“Ives, dear, I know what you think,” Pippa interrupts, sounding weary. “But that doesn’t make it true.”

“Right, maybe. But all I’m saying is, if _you _tried it—”

“The outcome would be the same. Likely worse, really, given it would be _me_—”

“Yeah, and here’s where I lose you! Because, from where I’m standing, even given whatever happened—and I’m still not sure I actually understand what it was that _did_ happen—even given that, maybe things have changed! Maybe—”

“They haven’t.”

Mage Aconite sighs. “_Pippa. _How would you _know? _If you don’t even—”

“Because it was _me, _alright? Whatever it was, whatever happened, it was _me,_” Pippa says. “And I haven’t changed. Not really. Not in essentials. And so I—“

“Miss Pentangle!”

Silence falls.

“Miss Pentangle?” a student runs up to Pippa’s side, clutching breathlessly at her stomach when she catches her. “Are our reflection compositions really due today? Because Freda’s saying they are, but that doesn’t make any sense. We’re not even getting back to school until this afternoon.” The girl gasps. “I won’t have any _time—_”

“Alright, Alethea, just take a breath,” Pippa says gently, a slight flatness to her voice the only sign of her curtailed conversation with Mage Aconite. “And, no, they’re due _next _Friday. Don’t fret. I’ll send out a maglet message reminding you all.”

“Oh.” Alethea sighs, a relieved smile overtaking her face. “_Good._” She runs back to her classmates, a chorus of _I told you so_’s rising up from the group a few moments after her arrival.

Hecate is much distracted during the journey home. Though she tries hard not to dwell on Pippa’s conversation, or on its near-infinite possible meanings, she finds the memory of it challenging to her resolution to bear Pippa’s hatred with stoic indifference.

They had almost certainly been talking of some other subject—how self-centred it was to assume, without evidence, that they had been discussing _Hecate._

But perhaps…_perhaps…_

“Hecate?”

Hecate starts.

Julie is looking up at her, eyes soft with concern. The Cackle’s entrance hall bustles with the last of the girls returning from putting their broomsticks up in the broomshed. A pair of second years engage in an absurd-looking battle involving small plastic shark heads on sticks—a questionable purchase from the museum gift shop—and Miss Drill follows after them to tell them off.

“You’ve been miles away all day,” Julie says. “Are you alright?”

Hecate shakes herself, gathering up her travelling bag and following Julie and Mildred out of the hall.

“Quite alright,” she says.

Julie gives her a sceptical look as they start up the staircase. “If you say so.” She shifts her bag to the opposite shoulder. “Anyway, I suppose I was still planning on doing Friday dinner tonight, if you’d like to join us. It’ll probably just be fish fingers or something from the freezer, but I thought you might like a quiet night, after the last few days.”

Hecate returns Julie’s sardonic look. “Yes, quite.” Then, more seriously, she says, “Thank you.”

They reach the top of the stairs, and Julie fixes her with a firm smile. “Of course.”

In the Hubbles’ kitchen, Julie arranges breaded rectangles of frozen fish onto a baking tray. At the stove, Hecate warms over a tin of something called ‘mushy peas’ and becomes preoccupied by the fish fingers packaging (“_Made with 100% Fish Fillet,_” she mutters to herself. “What on earth is that supposed to mean?” She very much hopes it isn’t some sly reference to the fact that the fish rectangles had once been made with…something other than fish. Surely, ‘fingers’ was purely a reference to the shape?). Mildred lays the table in her usual haphazard way, and then informs Hecate she’s burning the mushy peas, and drags a chair over to the stove so that she can supervise.

Julie’s telephone plays a radio broadcast, and when a man’s voice interrupts the music, Mildred picks the wooden spoon out of the peas, tilts her head, and mouths along: “_And now for the weather.”_

They eat between bursts of conversation, Julie delighting over the success of the trip, speaking softly as if voicing it would somehow bring it all to ruin after the fact. The meal is interrupted by the ring of the telephone; Julie gets up to answer it, talking quietly over by the wide window where the sun has begun to set behind the treetops.

Hecate and Mildred do the washing, Mildred sitting on the side with a spare tea towel draped over one arm, like she’d seen the waiters do at the Indian restaurant in Derbyshire. Hecate isn’t sure what purpose it serves, other than to add to the precarity of Mildred drying dishes—however, everything survives the experience intact, and so she decides to keep her thoughts to herself.

Julie is still talking as Hecate puts the kettle on to boil, walking distractedly in front of the window with a pleased smile on her face.

“Did they really?” she’s saying. “Obviously, I’d love it if we could—but do you think we could really manage all of them at once? Would any of the parents come, d’you think? Or is that not done at magic schools?”

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred walks back into the kitchen from the direction of her bedroom. “I’ve made you something,” she says, climbing back up onto the side near where Hecate’s stood. “It’s not very good, because it’s only the second one I ever made, but—” she pulls what appears to be a tangle of string from her trouser pocket. “Here.”

Hecate eyes the thing, which, as Mildred unravels it, she realizes is a knotted string bracelet. Like the one Pippa wears.

“Ben and Norah tried to fix it where I made the knots go all twisted, but I think it just made it worse. But I picked blue, because of your blue jumper, so—” Mildred makes a face, shrugging. “I hope you like it. But you don’t have to wear it, if you don’t want to. I’m going to keep practicing, and I can make you another one when I get better.”

Hecate is still so tired; everything in her mind is slow and hazy and gold-tinged, and it takes her a moment to catch up to what Mildred’s said. Her throat working, she shakes her head. “It’s—” She eyes the twisted little rope, navy and royal blue string tied together in clumsy knots. What does one say?

Mildred grimaces. “I know it’s not good.”

Hecate takes a fortifying breath. Carefully, she reaches out and puts her hand on Mildred’s forearm, stilling the girl as she makes to hide the bracelet away in her fist. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

Mildred looks up at Hecate with hesitant curiosity.

Hecate presses her lips together. “Would you—would you fasten it for me?”

Mildred frowns. “Really?”

“Changed your mind, have you?” Hecate asks, letting a bit of facetious offense creep into her voice. “Decided to keep it for yourself, have you, you horrible girl?”

Smiling a little, Mildred rolls her eyes. “No.” Shifting forward, she begins tying the bracelet onto Hecate’s wrist.

Hecate watches her softly.

“All the kids who didn’t get to go got really jealous,” Mildred says, as she’s finishing the knot. Hecate follows her line of sight across the room to Julie. “Pentangle’s kids get to choose which trip they’ll go on: autumn or spring. And now all the autumn kids want to go to the museum. Miss Spinner-Schmidt wants to know if Mum would be alright doing another trip there next year, maybe even with the whole school. Or maybe to somewhere else Ordinary.”

Taking her hand back, Hecate raises an eyebrow. “Eavesdropping, were we?”

Mildred makes a face at her. “I was just listening. And you were, too, when I came back. I saw you.”

Hecate sighs, turning around so she’s stood next to Mildred, so they both have a clear view out into the room.

Julie’s laughing, her eyes bright, her hair tangled from the broomstick flight, her left sleeve stained with mushy peas.

“She’s really happy,” Mildred says quietly.

“Yes,” Hecate says.

The word feels tight against the sudden swell in her chest, a lovely, warm feeling that’s been growing there for days, that settles like sunlight behind her lungs.

_I’m proud to know you_, she thinks, and the words almost echo in her mind, such is the force with which they overtake her thoughts.

Julie turns as if she’s heard, smiling at both of them.

Mildred waves, and Hecate notices there is a string bracelet tied around her wrist as well, the knots much neater than the ones in Hecate’s own, and Hecate wonders which of Mildred’s new friends had made it for her.

Julie covers the telephone with one hand. ’_Sorry,’ _she mouths, shaking her head, the brightness of her smile still shading her face with joy.

Hecate shakes her head back. _It’s no trouble, _she wants to say, and doesn’t—can’t, for the sunlight blocking her throat. But Julie seems to understand anyway.

The kettle boils, and Mildred pours the water into three cups and walks precariously across the side to reach a packet of tea cakes from the top of the refrigerator. She sits next to Hecate and sips at her peach tea and wipes her chocolate-stained fingers on the spare towel and hands Hecate a tea cake without asking and tells her for perhaps the fifth or sixth time that day that she hopes Ben and Norah will be able to visit that summer.

And Hecate sips her tea and nibbles obligatorily at the sugar-sweet biscuit and wonders how it was possible to hold this much feeling in her chest at once.

She thinks, perhaps for the first time, she might truly understand how it could make magic.

(And, though she tries desperately not to let her mind wander in that direction: she misses Pippa like a limb.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings.

May comes grey and dreary after a warm and sunny April. It rains for days on end, soaking the castle grounds so thoroughly that sporting practices are cancelled indefinitely and Miss Drill is made to conduct her P.E. lessons indoors in the Great Hall.

[Several tapestries, at least one window, and a bust of Alfhild the Able suffer the consequences. Miss Bat speaks of ill portent. Hecate speaks of perhaps not letting small girls play at witching croquet in the vicinity of 16th-century relics. Miss Drill responds that the girls playing at anything would be right out, then, given the entire castle was as old as Miss Bat’s boots.

“No offense,” she adds.

Miss Bat waves her hand dismissively.]

The teachers crowd close to the fire in the staff room between classes, sipping tea and shivering. The girls spend their free periods clustered around the entrance hall and in the stairwell alcoves, spelling folded paper bats into swarms, playing at tinny-sounding games on their maglets, planning raids on the school kitchens, and generally making nuisances of themselves.

And still, it rains.

Hecate very much does not believe in ill portent.

And yet, when she wakes on the morning of the Hallow trial to troubled grey skies and heavy sheets of rain, she cannot help but feel a deep sense of foreboding that no amount of common sense can shake.

**

Ada meets her wordlessly at the castle gates in the half-dark. It is not yet seven—an almost-hour—and Hecate cannot quite convince herself of the reality of the day. She feels on the edge of wakefulness, but just on the wrong side of it, suspended uncomfortably in slow-moving thoughts that never fully take shape.

They fly to London in a gale, stopping every five miles to replace their weather-repellent spells.

It hardly matters. They arrive at Council Park decidedly the worse for wear—and if they hadn’t been soaked to the skin during their flight, they certainly were after waiting in the mangled queue trying to get indoors.

Over the heads of the assembled crowd queueing inside the garden gates, the glass chambers of the Council building glimmer like jewels in the rain, bright and clear even to Hecate’s wind-stung eyes. The jungle of plant life inside cast jade-coloured shadows on the misted walls and domed copula. The effects is eerily beautiful; it does nothing for the cold dread seizing Hecate’s lungs.

“One at a time, one at a time!” shouts a harassed-looking old wizard in Council dress, standing just inside the doors of the vestibule. He has both hands clamped over his hat, the better to keep it in place while the young Council apprentice by his side casts poorly-aimed drying spells on each person as they cross the threshold.

Inside the main hall the air is thick and sweet, damp with the smell of rain and wet soil, and blissfully, mercifully _warm. _

Hecate feels her fingers begin to thaw. She shrinks her broom and tucks it away for safe-keeping, looking carefully around at the bustling atrium. Seeing no members of the press milling about, she allows herself to relax minutely.

All around, people in formal dress walk to-and-fro on wide tiled paths, some of them pausing to peer curiously at one specimen or another in the thick-grown gardens that grow along the walkways behind wrought-iron fences, others with their noses in guidebooks or wringing water out of their hats. A pair of bespectacled witches ascend from the ancient stone staircase that spirals down below the illusioned surface of a lily pond, likely making their way up from one of several Council departments hidden away underground.

At the level of the tree canopy, cast-iron catwalks rumble with the steps of important-looking people walking between the three storeys of glass offices that line the upper walls of the main building.

“I haven’t got the _time _for that today, Dawkins!” a woman’s voice calls from somewhere above. “Find somebody else to complain to.”

Ada taps at Hecate’s elbow, nodding toward a polished wooden shop stall that stands against the north wall at the confluence of several walkways.

The thought of food turns Hecate’s stomach, but she follows after Ada and allows her to buy her a cup of chamomile and a plain scone. They sit on one of the spindly tables near the stall, Ada sipping her sugared coffee, Hecate hardly touching her weak-brewed tea, and neither of them pointing out the obvious: that, sooner or later, they will have to make their way to the courtroom.

Hecate’s eyes drift unwittingly to the blackened-metal clock that hangs from the undergirding of the catwalk just ahead.

Nine fifty-seven.

The trial is to start promptly at 10:15.

She begins to go over her testimony in her head.

_Question: And how did you first come to hear that Ursula Hallow was to head the quinquennial review committee at Cackle’s Academy?_

_Answer: Miss Cackle informed me in early June the summer before their first term in residence._

_Question: And how did she come to know this information? It is not usual for the Council to notify schools of the committee membership until July, at least._

_Answer: Ursula Hallow is Miss Cackle’s cousin. She had written to inform Miss Cackle of her position herself._

_Question: And was this not suspicious to you?_

_Answer: No._

_Question: It wasn’t suspicious at all that a reviewer would break protocol and contact the headmistress of her assigned school prior to the formal establishment of the committee?_

_Answer: Well, perhaps—_

No. Short and to the point. Give nothing away they did not ask for.

Hecate closes her eyes, folding her hands tightly in her lap.

_Question: So you had no suspicions at all?_

_Answer: None that would have led me to take any action at the time._

_Question: And what about after Miss Hallow and her fellow reviewers arrived? What about then?_

Hecate grips her hands together.

“Hecate.”

She opens her eyes.

The clock reads 10:05.

Ada’s arbitrator has arrived and is standing a little distance away, his waxed moustache twitching irritably as he checks the time on his pocket watch.

“Miss Cackle,” he says. “Do allow me to impress upon you the importance of arriving on time to a court of code—particularly one hosting a trial which, at present, poses a very real threat to your livelihood.”

“Yes, thank you Mister Hollymeade,” Ada says mildly. “We’ll be along in a minute.”

Mister Hollymeade heaves an aggrieved sigh and turns to join the crowds making their way to the east wing.

When he’s gone, Ada reaches her hand across the table and places it over one of Hecate’s. Her eyes are soft and serious. “Whatever happens,” she says, “please remember that you have never—that you _could _never let me down.” She sighs. “This whole sorry business is my fault—

Hecate opens her mouth.

Ada shakes her head. “No, it _is_, at least whatever part could have been avoided had I just let myself listen to you. Let me take what share of the blame belongs to me. Promise me you won’t try anything foolish, Hecate, whatever happens. Answer the questions as you must. Don't put yourself at risk for my sake.” She presses her lips together, fixing Hecate with a serious look. “_Promise_ me.”

Heaving a shaky breath, Hecate nods.

Ada smiles softly. She taps her fingers gently against the back of Hecate’s hand. “You, my dear, have been a gift to the school, and to me, since you first set foot in the castle. And, whatever comes of the next weeks, you will continue in the same way for many years to come. Never doubt it.”

Hecate looks away, her breath catching. She feels too many things at once to name them.

Ada just squeezes her hand, and stands, and magicks away Hecate’s cold tea and untouched scone, and walks by her side down the path to the courtroom, the last of the straggling crowds walking away ahead of them.

When they near the smoked glass doors of the courtroom, Ada takes Hecate’s arm.

The guards on either side of the open doorway touch their foreheads and bow.

Lights explode in Hecate’s eyes as they cross the threshold. The reporters up in the observation balcony are pressing themselves against the railing, their cameras flashing like fireworks overhead. They are prohibited from asking questions, but Hecate feels them all the same, pressing like ocean water against her ears.

An apprentice guides them to their seats near the front of the gallery, just across from the witness’ stand. A row of ornate wooden chairs sit before them on the long dais at the head of the room, awaiting the entrance of the jurists and code scholars and memory keepers.

Hecate sits stiffly, her hands curling against her lap. The courtroom echoes with footsteps and soft murmurings and spring coughs, each sound bloomed broad and quivering in the vaulted space. Rain pit-pats against the high, arched ceiling, the iron girding stretched above them like the ribcage of some ancient being. Grey light falls the heady distance to the marble floors, shadows of rain-slicked glass shivering in the wide aisles between the gallery benches.

A bell sounds, hollow and deep.

The doors close. Silence falls.

Hecate’s heart jumps painfully in her chest. 

The chamberlain calls the gallery to order, planting his staff firmly in the centre of the compass rose patterned into the marble floor at the foot of the dais.

The staff glows. The frosted glass behind the dais begins to clear.

The chamber beyond is quite as tall and twice as wide as the courtroom itself, and resembles a ‘chamber’ only in that it possesses four glass walls and a vaulted roof.

Inside the walls, it looks more like a summer field, preserved somehow outside the passage of time. Green grass ripples in an impossible breeze, speckled through with chamomile and Queen Anne’s lace. Golden sunlight shines from nowhere, and, despite the rain visible through the walls, the sky above the grass gives the impression of a cloudless afternoon.

And there, on the crest of a hill in the centre of the chamber, grows the Rowan Tree.

Hecate remembers the stories. The Tree was meant to be the oldest living thing in witching Britain, said to have sprouted from the heart of Justina the Warrior after she gave her life defending the south from the dark wizard Sylcaer in the days before the Council.

The Tree is broad and deep-rooted, its branches spread in a wide, dark, tangled arch over unshadowed ground, almost too large to comprehend. It shimmers oddly in the magicked sunlight, the air around it snapping with some unearthly energy.

It is beautiful and horrible and terrifying, born of death from the heart of an ancient war-witch.

And Hecate has the sudden thought that it has no place here, among the banal cruelty of bureaucrats and the machinations of politicians, made silent witness to the petty crimes of humanity.

She feels almost ashamed to look at it, aware in a way she has never been of the ignorance of witches, a people who put wild things in glass cages and write codes to govern the use of cosmic powers they hardly begin to understand.

She is startled out of the thought by the entrance of the jurists, who parade solemnly down the centre aisle and up onto the dais, their velvet robes billowing importantly after them.

The head jurist, an old man with a greying beard, makes a sweeping gesture with his right hand, then his left, and all of the jurists take their seats at once.

A side door opens, and the trio of code experts enter, followed by a pair of memory keepers, one for each side of the arbitration.

When all of the officials have reached their places, the chamberlain gives the order for the gallery to take their seats once more.

There is a great rumbling and creaking of wood and then, again, silence.

The arbitrators rustle their papers. The memory keepers cast blue flames under their glass cauldrons, drawing silver stirrers from their cases. The code experts place their hands on their books, reciting the oath that makes the pages flash white with a Tell-All spell.

Hecate’s heart beats in her throat.

The head jurist stands. “We are gathered this morning to hear the case against the Hallow conspirators. Following the opening arguments, we will hear from a selection of key witnesses, beginning with the side of the Council. Now, if you would give your attention to—”

The main doors bang open. A flustered-looking apprentice appears, her robes swinging wildly around her ankles, her wide eyes sweeping the gallery.

“What is the meaning of this?” the head jurist asks, peering down at the apprentice. “This is a closed-door—_I say!_”

The apprentice has sprinted across to the chamberlain’s stand the foot of the dais. She leans to whisper something in his ear, her hands twisting together in front of her. Hecate watches as the chamberlain’s face slips from irritation to consternation to white-faced concern.

A low murmur begins circling through the gallery. Apprehension grips Hecate’s chest.

“And how long, did they say?” Hecate can hear the chamberlain ask.

“I don’t know,” the apprentice says. “I don’t _know_! They haven’t heard anything from the detail since, and I don’t—”

Someone screams.

Hecate’s heart jumps.

She looks around for the source of the fright but can’t find anything.

Then someone points to the sky.

A formation of broomsticks streaks past overhead, their shadows sweeping over the floor of the gallery.

And at first, Hecate thinks it must just be the prison transport. She forcibly calms herself, feeling a spike of irritation at the person who had screamed. One hardly came to a criminal trial without having a reasonable expectation of seeing criminals, after all.

But then she thinks: the transports were meant to arrive at the south gate, far from the main building. Their flight path should never have crossed the airspace above the courtroom.

And they were flying much too low—much too—

** _CRASH! _ **

The glass ceiling above the Rowan Tree explodes in a fiery blast.

Hecate is thrown to the floor.

For an impossible moment, everything is white-bright and ringing, suspended in an impossible silence.

Then it all comes crashing back in a wave of sound.

Screams fill the air. Dark, hard heat whips her skin. The smell of ash. The marble presses hard against her bones, and she can feel the earth spinning out from beneath her—or is it her own body, spinning away from the earth? A tremor rips through the floor, and she feels out of time, out of space—

“Hecate! Hecate!”

Someone pulls at her shoulder.

Ada.

“Hecate, are you alright?”

Hecate scrabbles for a grip on the hand pulling at her arm. She can barely hear her over the chaos of the room.

“Order—_order—” _someone calls, to no avail.

Hecate rights herself, holding fast to Ada’s hand, staggering forward with one arm clutched around her middle. Her hair has come undone. A wash of heat whips it out of her face.

She looks up.

Behind the courtroom wall, the fields around the Rowan Tree are burning. The Tree glows black against a hazy orange sky. Smoke drifts in plumes across the horizon.

The broomsticks and their riders have disappeared.

No.

Something shifts in the shimmering heat at the base of the tree.

A dark figure emerges from the smoke.

Hecate’s heart stops.

The press of the crows jostles her. People stumble past, wailing, screaming, holding handkerchiefs to oozing cuts on their faces.

The figure draws nearer, his eyes heat-glazed and glittering, coal-bright.

The world drops out from beneath her feet and Hecate is falling, falling.

The chamberlain, whose left arm seems at the wrong angle, scrabbles across the rubble-strewn floor for his staff.

Twice, he is nearly trampled by the panicked crowd.

Perhaps Hecate should help—somebody should _help _him—

The chamberlain grasps his staff, drags himself to the compass rose at the foot of the dais, and plunges the staff into its centre.

“_Ut Salutem!”_ he cries, his voice ragged.

There is a sudden, bright flash.

And then darkness.

**

“What’s happened? What’s happened?”

“Well, they’ve evacuated us, Margie. To the old war bunker under the park—look, it says so on this sign, here.”

“I know they’ve evacuated us, Edwin! I can see they’ve evacuated us! What I want to know is _why!_”

“Well, I hardly know—”

“I never said I was asking _you, _you useless lump!”

Someone clears their throat. “Madam, if you would attempt to remain calm—”

“I _am _calm!”

_Ping! _

_Ping-ping-ping-ping! Ping!_

“I’ve just had a news alert—” somebody shouts into the dim, musty space. Old lines of electric lighting flicker overhead. A peeling sign spelled to the tile wall reads _COUNCIL PARK EMERGENCY BUNKER (Please Remain Calm). _

“They’re saying the Hallows have escaped! Threw off their guard just after leaving Grimsby Castle—”

“Yes,” says somebody else, “but why would they come _here, _instead of just disappearing somewhere? Surely they knew they were taking a chance getting caught, flying right over the heads of the jurists, not to mention blowing up the Rowan Tree in front of the entire Magic Council.”

“How should I know? From what I’ve read, that lot’s batty as a belfry! They’d have to be, to do what they did last year to those kids at the tournament.”

“Allegedly.”

“Well, it’s hardly ‘_alleged’ _anymore, is it, now they’ve escaped? You know that’s an automatic ‘guilty’ verdict. They’d better hope they never get captured—they’ll all be stripped of their magic on sight.”

“You sound awfully concerned with the welfare of a bunch of good-for-nothings.”

“I’m _not _concerned. I’m only saying: they’d better watch out.”

_Ping!_

_Ping-ping!_

“Oh, look! It says here they’ve got people putting out the fire upstairs—”

“—and that it might take _several more hours_—”

“Several more hours! They can’t keep us here for that long, can they?”

“Sure, they can do what they like with us. Security mandate, isn’t it?”

_Ping!_

“My Auntie Agnes just messaged me,” a young woman’s voice says, somewhere nearby.

“Oh! Does she have any news?”

“No. She just wants to know if there are any cute witches down here.”

Laughter. “And what’ll you tell her?”

“Erm. Well. There’s at least one, I’d say.”

“Oh.”

“What—_Ophelia_.”

“What?”

“Merlin’s sake, I—well, I mean. Oh—bugger it!”

“_What?”_

“Just. I, erm. Listen, when this is over, do you maybe—do you maybe want to get coffee sometime?”

“Well, sure, I mean—Oh.”

“…Yeah.”

“_Oh._”

_Ping!_

_Ping-ping-pingping! Ping-ping!_

“Now they’re saying the Hallows had help,” somebody says, lifting their maglet in the air. “Or a tagalong, at least. They found that Bakewell fellow unconscious in his cell. Somebody’s knocked him out and escaped in his place!”

“Really? Isn’t the security at Grimsby supposed to be state-of-the-art?”

Somebody snorts. “Yeah. For the eighteenth century.”

“Says here there’s an active manhunt.”

Someone whistles. “And look at the reward! Just my luck to be stuck down here for all this.”

“Hang on—now how can they have a manhunt when they don’t even know who it is who’s escaped? How would people know who to be looking for?”

“I’m sure _they _know who they’re looking for. They’re just not telling _us._”

“Whoever it is will be wearing prison robes, won’t they? So that’s one thing.”

Someone scoffs. “Like that wouldn’t be the first thing they’d change.”

“Well, I don’t know, Reginald! I was just making a suggestion!”

There’s a great deal of yelling and scuffling and shouting of _calm down! _and _you calm down! _after that.

“Good morning, everyone!” Ada says, standing suddenly and magnifying her voice so it rises over the crowd. “Everyone! Why don’t we all take a deep breath. Good! And another one! Well done! Now, I know we’ve all had a bit of a scare, and we’d all like to get out of here as soon as possible. But none of that can be helped by shouting at each other, can it?”

Everyone quiets. The whole crowded space is suddenly still.

“There. That’s much better,” Ada says, lacing her hands across her front and smiling around at everyone, as if they were unruly students in the great hall at Cackle’s, rather than a number of strangers trapped together underground. “Now, I’ve been attempting to contact my friend in the Great Wizard’s office to see about their plans for us. While we await his answer, why don’t we think of something pleasant to do to pass the time?”

A spate of sceptical muttering breaks out. The volume rises, threatening to break into shouting once more.

Then the young woman called Ophelia raises her voice. “Latika’s a music teacher,” she says, pointing at the young woman who had gotten the prying message from her aunt.

“_Ophelia,_” Latika hisses, scowling.

“And I’ve got my accordion,” the old man called Edwin says, drawing the instrument from the air beside him.

“Splendid!” Ada says. “Why don’t you lead us all in something?”

Latika looks awkwardly across at Edwin. “Erm. Do you know _Old Miss Murkwood Had A Cat?_” She grimaces. “Sorry. I teach at a cottage school, so all I know are kids’ songs.”

“Sure do,” Edwin says, grinning.

The accordion breathes out its first wheezing notes, and the song begins—ragged and awkward, stuttering along like a limp old broom. And then, like the beginnings of a rainstorm, scattered voices join in at intervals from all around, filling the dim space with music. The sound is rough-hewn still, but with a hardy fullness to it now that speaks of determination. It seems to rise into the damp, close air, humming and electric, an almost visible lightness rising with it, drawing everyone at once up and out and together.

People begin to smile at each other, quick-bright and almost surprised, as if they had just then realized they were in company.

Ada sits back down next to Hecate and takes up her hand again. “Alright?” she asks softly, under the veil of voices rising around them.

Hecate breathes and breathes and hopes that’s enough of an answer.

**

They return to the castle in the deep dark of the night, the shadows so dense Hecate can barely make out the shape of the door even as they move through it.

The entrance hall is warm, the fires burning low and dim in the hearth.

Shapes shift. A light flickers on.

“They’re back!”

“They’re back! They’re here!”

There is a sudden rush of voices. More lights flicker on. Footsteps clatter down the stairs. The door to the dining hall swings open.

“Everyone! They’re back! They’re alright!”

The entrance hall now glows with light.

All around the room, children sit up from chairs and from nests of blankets on the floor, looking sleep-mussed and bleary eyed and relieved.

Miss Drill appears from behind a sofa. “Miss Cackle! HB! You’re alright!” she says, rushing over. She’s quickly joined by Miss Mayweather and Miss Gossamer. “We were so worried. We tried to get the kids to sleep, but the damn notifications kept coming in, and we didn’t like to take away their maglets, not with everything happening so—well—we decided to wait up for you down here.” She pauses, looking them over. “You alright? You look bloody awful.” She makes a face, sighing. “Listen, HB, they’re saying it might have been—"

But then whatever she had planned to say is cut across several times over by the small assembly of staff and students that have begun crowding around the doorway, jostling each other and calling out questions.

“—What happened?—”

“—What was it like?—”

“—Did they really crash through the ceiling?—”

“—Did they really have an army of giants?—”

“—Was it really—"

Hecate presses herself back against the door.

“Miss Hardbroom!”

Hecate barely has time to brace herself before a small body collides with hers.

“You’re okay!” Mildred says, her voice sounding a little choked. She wraps her arms tightly around Hecate’s waist, tilting her head to look up at her. Her cheeks are wet. She’s been crying. “You’re okay. Mum said—”

“_Hecate—_” Julie has shoved her way through the crowd and is standing in front of her in her pyjamas and dressing gown, her face drawn and white.

Hecate can’t breathe. She can’t—she _can’t—_

“Alright—alright, everyone back away, please. It’s alright, girls, just make some space. Dimity—could you—?”

“Yeah—yeah. Of course.”

“Hecate?” Someone grips onto her arm. “Hecate, I’m going to have Dimity transfer us to your rooms. Alright?”

Hecate’s head spins.

“Dimity, I think you’d better just—”

“Yeah, got it. Alright, ready? And—”

The world fades, reforms. Hecate stumbles. Somebody catches her by the elbow.

“Thanks. Would you tell Miss Cackle where she is? She passed us in the corridor coming down--gone up to mirror somebody, I think--and I don't want her coming back and wondering...”

“No problem. Let me know if you need anything else. I’m just going to go and see if I can get the kids to go to bed. Wish me luck. And feel better, HB, alright? We've all got your back.”

The door to the rooms swings open. A dark shape rushes forward, twining itself around Hecate’s ankles. Morgana.

“Millie, love, would you turn on the light?”

The lamp switches on over the couch.

“I’m going to turn on some music, ok, Mum?” Mildred says, hurrying over to the Victrola cabinet.

“That sounds like a great idea, sweets. How about you try and find us something really calm?”

A hand presses gently at Hecate’s elbow, guiding her out of the front room and back through the kitchen into the rear hallway. It leaves her then, and Hecate swims in the dark for some unmeasurable time, until light turns on in a doorway and there’s the sound of running water tumbling from somewhere within.

“I thought you might want a bath,” Julie says, and Hecate doesn’t quite register the words until she’s alone in the steaming room and staring at her own reflection in the mirror.

Wild eyes. Coal-bright, glittering.

Her hair smells of smoke.

She emerges again, later, dressed in her own clean things, whole oceans of water seeped into her bones, pulling her down under some blackened tide, her hair dripping like wet rags onto the floor.

“Hecate,” Julie says, and stands from the settee.

There’s a fire in the hearth. Mildred is curled up on the rug with Morgana, a blanket from the Hubbles’ rooms draped around her.

Julies hands slip into hers, guiding her to sit. They stroke at her hair, pulling it from her face, patting it dry with a tea towel, twisting it away from her shoulders where it’s soaked through the fabric of her dressing down.

“There’s tea, if you want it,” Julie says, “and biscuits. Or I could bring you some dinner, if you like. I guess they didn’t feed you. We had spaghetti tonight, there’s plenty left—”

Hot tears slip down Hecate’s cheeks.

“Oh, lovely,” Julie breathes, turning from the tea and back to Hecate, her hand coming to grip Hecate’s forearm. “Hecate. I—” She shakes her head, her eyes overbright. “I’m so sorry." She shakes her head again. "They were saying—in the papers, they’d started to say it was—but I didn’t know whether I should believe them. They’d been trying to sensationalize the whole thing all day. And. Well—” She stops herself, a dark look passing across her face, there and gone again. “But it was him, wasn’t it?” she asks, softly. “It was him who got out with them. Your father.”

Hecate’s breath hitches. More tears escape.

Wild eyes. Coal-bright, glittering in the smoke.

She nods, breathing and breathing and breathing.

Julie’s arms come up around her, pulling her close, and Hecate stops trying to hold herself together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mild violence, dissociative episode
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm sorry this chapter is the one that fell this week. Next week's is happier (or, at the very least, more hopeful), I promise.


	29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

_HARDBROOM SEARCH ONGOING_

_Notorious Necromancer Nowhere To Be Found After Thursday Escape From Grimsby Castle Prison! All Brooms Assembled For Manhunt, Says Whiggins Of Council Committee On Criminal Conspiracy_

AWP (Allied Witching Press) – _Horus Hardbroom, imprisoned these last forty years on thirteen charges of—_

Hecate flips the newspaper over, hiding the latest headline under the edge of Julie’s folding computer. The press has been absolutely relentless in their coverage of the story—and, of course, this time there was nothing preventing them from bringing her name into it every chance they had, or from harassing her at every turn for a statement. She wouldn’t have thought things could get much worse than they had been before the trial, but it seemed the news witches were willing to do just about everything short of transferring directly into Hecate’s front room to get their scoop. As it was, she has had letters popping up in droves all over her rooms, had been forced to let Ada take over her classes for the foreseeable future due to the persistent interruption of her teaching by astral projection, and can hardly set foot outside without being accosted by photographers on broomsticks.

_Ding-ding! Ding-ding! Ding-ding!_

Grimacing, Hecate sends a particularly vicious Silencing spell at her mirror, which had been ringing near-constantly for days.

“Miss Hardbroom, there’s another one!” Mildred calls, running into the front room with a frantically flapping letter pinched between her fingers. She gives it a brief glare before turning to Hecate. “Can I do it?”

Hecate sighs. “By all means,” she says, making a dismissive gesture in the direction of the hearth.

Mildred grins and goes to throw the letter into the low-burning fire, where it bursts into spectacular purple flames. “I know they’re annoying,” she says, watching the whole process with eager eyes, “but it’s also sort of fun to set them on fire.”

Hecate, who has been endeavoring all afternoon to distract herself from the current state of affairs with the latest issue of _The Practical Potioneer, _holds the journal closer to her face and does not dignify this with a response.

Mildred goes back to whatever it was she was doing in the kitchen. (She was meant to be working on homework, but Hecate has been glancing over often enough to know that Mildred’s maths book was being employed at present as a coaster for her glass of apple juice, and therefore could not have been much help with whatever problems she had been set.)

After a few more agonizing minutes of attempting to read the same sentence over and over, Hecate puts the journal aside and leans back against the settee, closing her eyes.

She’s not slept well, recently, to say the least.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

“Hmm?”

“How do you spell ‘conscience’? Like ‘you have to follow your conscience’?”

“C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.”

“Thanks.”

Hecate feels herself start to drift.

“How do you spell ‘exaggerate’?”

Hecate sighs. “E-X-A-G-G-E-R-A-T-E.”

“Thanks.”

The room is warm and pleasant. Morgana purrs, tucked up against Hecate’s side. Hecate—

“How do you spell ‘mischievous’?”

Hecate opens her eyes. “Mildred, what is it you’re doing?”

She knows that Mildred usually used an Ordinary computer to do her homework, whenever there was writing required. It had something like a dictation jinx in it, so that it would read the words Mildred wrote back to her while she typed and help her to know if she was mixing the letters up in her head.

If she was writing something out by hand, it must mean Hecate’s suspicions had been correct: she wasn’t doing her homework at all.

“I’m writing a letter to Ethel.”

Hecate pauses. “Ethel?”

“Yes. Ethel Hallow?”

Hecate sits up straight. Morgana leaps to the floor, giving Hecate a distinctly peeved look before flouncing off toward the kitchen. “Ethel. Hallow.”

Mildred’s chair creaks. She’s frowning across the room at Hecate. “Yes, Ethel Hallow. She’s lonely, I guess, and Miss Cackle said she could use a witch friend her age, and so she asked me if I wouldn’t mind writing to her. And I didn’t, so now I do.” She shrugs. “She was sort of mean at first, but she’s not so much now. And she’s actually really funny, sometimes. Her and her sisters go to an Ordinary school in their Auntie Rose’s village—she’s not really their aunt, she’s just their cousin, but they still call her ‘Auntie Rose’—anyway, they go to an Ordinary school, because even though people aren’t allowed to write about kids in the papers, everyone magical still knew about…you know, what their parents did, because I guess their whole family was really famous or really important, or something. And so everyone knew what happened. And Auntie Rose thought it would be best if they went to a school where nobody would know who they were. Or, know about their parents, at least.” Mildred takes a breath. “_Anyway, _they go to an Ordinary school, and there’s this boy called Everett who people tease her about—I guess because ‘Ethel’ sort of sounds like ‘Everett,’ and so everybody thinks they should get married. And last week—” Mildred cuts herself off then, making a face. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you _exactly _what she did, because I think she told it to me as a secret, and I don’t want her to get in trouble. But it was really funny.”

Hecate doesn’t know what to think. Or perhaps it’s only that she’s too tired to muddle through what her thoughts _should _be, on the subject.

“Did you know her sister Esme is going to Pentangle’s next year?”

Hecate had not. She would have thought…

“Ethel says it’s because people at Cackle’s might have a bad idea about Esme, because of what her parents did to them.”

Yes, Hecate could see how that might end badly.

“But Ethel says she’s going to come to Cackle’s anyway. She says people can think what they like. She doesn’t care.” Mildred pauses. “I think she _does _care—but it’s still brave to care and then have to pretend you don’t. Um. Don’t you think?”

Hecate makes a noncommittal noise.

_Pop!_

“There’s another letter,” Mildred says, sounding a bit weary this time. “Can I burn it up again?”

“Yes, alright,” Hecate says, picking her journal back up mostly for the sake of doing something that isn’t attempting to add the letter to the day’s tally.

The letter flames green in the fire and Mildred stands by the hearth, watching it burn. “Miss Hardbroom?”

“Yes?” Hecate flips a page without reading it. It was forty-two. Forty-two letters.

Mildred doesn’t say anything. Hecate looks up, watching the girl as she seems to struggle with herself for a moment, before finally walking over and taking a seat next to Hecate on the settee. She tucks her hands under her knees, her feet swinging out in front of her.

The silence fills the room, pressing against Hecate’s ears, and she knows, somehow, what Mildred is going to say seconds before she opens her mouth.

Dread blooms in her throat.

“Your dad did something bad, didn’t he? To Ordinary people?” Mildred asks, and Hecate’s heart hammers in her ears. Mildred ducks her head, turning away a little. “That’s why he was in jail, isn’t it? I wasn’t trying to listen, but I heard the girls talking, and Miss Bat said…” Mildred sighs. “Miss Bat said he—” She bites her lip. “It was what you were saying, wasn’t it?” she asks, quietly. “About Vital magic.”

They had been talking more about Vital magic in their Saturday lessons recently, in preparation for the summer, when Hecate hoped to begin instructing Mildred in the preparation of simple Level One potions. She had been explaining how it was against the Code to use live animals in spells or potions, except under very rare circumstances, and about how the animal parts used must be harvested humanely and responsibly. And Mildred had asked: _what about humans?_

Hecate doesn’t recall precisely what she’d said. Something stern and frantic about how the use of live humans in spells had been highly illegal for centuries, how anyone even in possession of related spellbooks or paraphernalia could be stripped of their magic and thrown in prison for life, how Mildred wasn’t to even think about such things.

It hadn’t occurred to her until later that Mildred had likely only meant to ask about things like hair or toenail clippings or Breath of a Witch, and Hecate had been horrified at herself for talking the way she had in front of a child who would probably never have considered the existence of such spells had Hecate not mentioned them to her.

That horror comes back to her now tenfold, a deep, pressing chill that grips her lungs.

Mildred is still talking, her legs swinging harder, her small face pinched with worry. “And that’s what Miss Hackensack was talking about in the corridor, that one time. When she said—about chopping up little girls.”

It isn’t a question.

Hecate feels ill.

“Mildred…” She swallows, her fingers gripping so hard at the journal the pages tear in her hands.

Mildred looks up at her with troubled eyes.

“Mildred, I—” She can scarcely breathe. “I’m sorry,” Hecate manages, her skin humming with a vague, dull sort of shock. “I’m _sorry, _I—”

Mildred frowns at her suddenly. “Why are _you _sorry?”

Hecate stills.

“It was your dad that did it,” Mildred says, making a face like she’s honestly confused at how Hecate could have made such a mistake. “Weren’t you just a little kid?”

She looks, in that moment, so like Julie that Hecate’s chest hurts.

Mildred leans back against the settee, playing with the ends of her hair. “I just thought…it’s a little like Ethel. And how it’s not fair that everyone thinks she’s evil, or something, just because her parents did bad things. And I guess… I don’t know. I wanted to tell her about you, and how even though your dad did bad things, you’re still good. You have friends, and nobody thinks you’re evil.”

And Hecate finds herself in the very odd position of having to try not to laugh and cry in the same breath. “I think,” she says, clearing her throat and feeling more than a little absurd, “you’ll find the students here, at least, would disagree with you on the last.”

Mildred rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes, but they don’t actually _mean _it. You’re kind of scary to some of them, I think—which is a bit funny—but they still think you’re the bats. Especially after last year.”

Hecate doesn’t know whether to be gratified or offended. Then she registers what Mildred had said. “You wish to tell Ethel Hallow…about me?”

Mildred shifts her legs up onto the settee, turning so she’s facing Hecate fully. “Not if you don’t want me to. I just think it might be good if she knew it could be okay. For her. I know she’s worried about it, even if she doesn’t exactly say so. And she really likes potions, so I think she’d like you, anyway. I told her you were going to teach me the Levitation potion this summer, and she said she could make that when she was six.” Mildred wrinkles her nose. “She’s a little braggy sometimes. But she said if she ever came to visit Miss Cackle here—Miss Cackle’s her cousin, too, did you know?—that maybe we could make something together in your lab, if you let us. She said she could maybe teach me one that can turn you into a dragon.”

Hecate freezes. “Absolutely not!”

Mildred sighs. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” She chews at the end of her hair. “So…is it okay? If I tell her?”

Hecate’s throat works, and she finds she can’t quite hold Mildred’s gaze.

She recalls, last month on the half-term trip, how Miss Drill had asked Mage Aconite if she might tell her sister’s child—Ruby—about them. To—to make things seem survivable, Hecate supposes. Positive proof of existence, of a light somewhere in the distance. A reachable future.

She thinks about how much she would have given to have that, as a child.

“You can read it, if you want, before I send it,” Mildred says softly. “I usually have Mum read it for me, anyway, to make sure I spelled everything right. We’re trying to see about helping Auntie Rose get a computer, so maybe Ethel can e-mail me instead. She says she wants one for school, too, only Auntie Rose doesn’t know anything about them, or how to get them. So Mum said she’d help.” Mildred breathes. “So…can I?”

“I…that would be…acceptable,” Hecate manages, and only realizes after she’s said it how much more than _acceptable _it was.

Mildred hurries away to finish the letter and then hurries back to hand it to Hecate before running off in the direction of the bathroom—it was getting late, and she’d promised her mother to have finished bathing and dressing for bed before Julie returned from her mild-healer appointment.

Hecate stares down at the paper in her hands: thin, lined, pastel blue, and decorated at its edges with the same scribbled stars and moons Hecate was used to seeing in the margins of Mildred’s lesson notebooks.

_Dear Ethel,_

Hecate takes a fortifying breath. She was only looking for spelling errors. It was only marking. It was only…

_Dear Ethel,_

The letter is like its author: funny and kind and sharp-witted and occasionally silly, and Hecate remembers without meaning to the little bits of parchment folded into swans or owls or butterflies or bats, slipped under the crook of her elbow in Chanting class while Miss Redcap’s back was turned…

Reading things from Mildred’s perspective makes everything seem so simple.

_Miss Hardbroom’s dad was sort of like your parents. But Miss Hardbroom is nothing like her dad, and everybody important knows that, and nobody thinks she’s bad like him. _

Hecate presses her lips together, blinking back tears.

_It was your dad that did it. Weren’t you just a little kid?_

Were things really that simple?

_It wasn’t you._

Could it be that simple?

_Hecate, none of that was your fault. Do you hear me?_

Julie had told her, a year ago now—but Hecate hadn’t believed her—hadn’t known _how _to believe her—

_Not one part of that was ever your fault._

Hecate doesn’t know what would happen—what it would look like, who she would _be_—if she let it be that simple.

It feels like the whole world is shifting under her fingers.

**

Julie comes back just after eight, and Mildred convinces her that it isn’t too late to start the next episode of _The Great British Bake-Off. _

On the first terrible night after the trial, it had been all Hecate could do to keep from falling to pieces in front of Mildred. But, even after exhausting herself on Hecate’s behalf for most of the day fielding letters and maglet messages and mirror calls and overwhelming but well-meaning visits from other members of staff, Julie had flatly refused to leave Hecate by herself. She’d distracted Mildred by tasking her with cleaning up the dinner dishes and had gone up to her rooms and brought back her small folding computer. She and Mildred had gone back and forth for a minute trying to choose what to watch, but in the end they’d put on the _Bake-Off _programme, which was about a group of Ordinary people baking in a tent in the middle of a field. It was a little like the potions practicums Hecate had been a part of as a child—except that they’d taken place in old dungeons instead of summer fields, and had been judged by respected university professors rather than smarmy middle-aged men who thought themselves above everyone just because their father happened to own a bakery.

(Hecate had known boys like him in her village growing up, and had quite reached her limit with that sort of person a good four decades prior.)

(Mary Berry seemed nice enough, however.)

It was the fifth evening in a row the Hubbles had spent with her. Hecate tries not to let herself get used to it: to the smell of Julie’s tea in the kitchen; to the haphazard stack of books cluttering the low table in front of the settee, propping up the folding computer to a viewing height; to the sounds of other bodies moving around her space; to the pair of familiar voices filling the silence; to the press of elbows on either side as they all settle onto the settee for the night.

Mildred, who seemed to spend as much time watching Hecate’s reaction to the happenings on screen as she did watching the screen itself, folds herself up next to Hecate and says, looking at the computer screen, “Oh, it’s the biscuits one! Those are the best ones. They’ve got to make scenes and stuff out of biscuits.” She pulls the blanket from the back of the settee and wraps it around her head like a shawl.

Julie settles herself on Hecate’s other side, handing Hecate a cup of tea and then cradling her own against her chest. “Only fifteen minutes, mind,” she warns. “Then it’s up to bed with you.”

Mildred protests a little, but quiets down once the programme has started. She pulls a tangle of string and scissors from the rucksack at her feet, tongue poking out between her teeth as she fastens one of the tangles with a pin to the knee of her pyjama pants, combing through it with her fingers before continuing with the row of clumsy knots she’s been working into the string the last two evenings.

She’s making new Colour-changing bracelets (her own invention) to send to her Pentangle’s friends, and Hecate now knows she’s promised one to Ethel as well.

“—_Ready, set…bake!—” _yell the two women on the screen, and all of the people in the tent begin scrambling about for their equipment. Hecate hopes they’ve all remembered to pre-heat their ovens.

She mentions as much to Julie, who snorts into her tea, and Hecate can’t tell whether she’s more pleased about having made Julie laugh or having remembered the word ‘_pre-heat.’_

She decides it’s a draw.

Morgana, who has apparently forgiven Hecate her earlier offence, leaps up onto the table—_Morgana, move, you’re blocking out Sue’s face—_and then onto Hecate’s lap, curling up with her ribs pressing warmly against Hecate’s stomach.

And Julie’s laughing at something Mel said on the screen and Mildred’s whispering inelegant-but-finally-effective Colour-change Charms at the strings around her fingers and the room is pleasant and warm and full of everything it’s been missing for years—

And Hecate falls asleep.

“—_and that girl has become a distraction. You have too much potential, too much power, to squander it making silly plans.”_

_Hecate clutches her books to her chest and doesn’t say a word. She’s good at that. (She’s always been good at that.)_

_Broomhead towers over her, her cold blue eyes fixed on a spot over Hecate’s shoulder. _

_She never looks at Hecate if she can help it._

_“I’ve given you everything, my girl. Everything you have, everything you are. And don’t you forget it. I’ll not have my time wasted.”_

_Hecate breathes carefully, keeping her face empty, counting back from one hundred in her head._

_Broomhead clasps her hands behind her back. “You’re not to talk to that girl again.”_

_Hecate doesn’t flinch._

_“Do you understand?” _

_And it happens like that: like a flash of light, Broomhead goes from eerie calm to incandescent rage._

_“Do you understand? You useless girl! I haven’t spent the last eight years feeding you, dressing you, cleaning up your nasty messes to end up with a little flit-witch who turns her back on family to serve her own selfish whims!” She throws the glass vial in her hands—Hecate’s potion from the afternoon’s private lesson—at the wall, where it smashes into a slimy silver stain against the stone. “You’re just like your father! Rotten, the lot of you!”_

_Hecate breathes and breathes and breathes._

_“You’re not to speak to that girl again,” Broomhead says, her nostrils flaring, her voice sinking down, steady and cool again. “And if I hear you’ve even so much as breathed in her direction, you’ll never know what hit you.”_

_Hecate nods, once, pressing her shoulders back so they don’t shake._

_“Now get out of my sight.”_

_The door flings open without Hecate touching it, and she walks silently out into the corridor, and down the stairs, and out into the blinding afternoon sunlight._

_The other girls are on their afternoon break, whispering in the little shaded alcoves along the stone walkway, sprawled out on blankets on the grass, sitting together on the benches near the castle walls, their heads bent together over spellbooks._

_Exams were nearly over, and everyone talks of summer._

_Hecate wonders what it would be like, to look forward to the end of term, to escape somewhere warm and wide and sunny, think of the summer holidays with anything but dread. She can already feel it creeping under her skin: the empty castle, the darkened towers, the lonely weeks stretching together like a band around her chest._

_Broomhead’s words echo in her mind. She pushes them away, locks them up with the rest of the horrible things. Pulls her shoulders back. Straight and tall and still._

_They’d find a way around her. They always did. _

_They had to._

_They _had _to._

_Hecate doesn’t know how she’d survive without—_

_“Pippa!”_

_It was Georgette Plover’s voice. _

_Hecate ducks behind a stone pillar. Georgette had tripped her in the great hall that morning, and Hecate had put frog spawn in her tea at breakfast in retaliation. She doesn’t want to know what Georgette will do if she sees her, just now._

_And she especially doesn’t want to find out if she’d dare do whatever-it-was in front of Pippa._

_They were meant to practice out on the lake this afternoon for their exhibition in the leavers’ broomstick display, and Hecate doesn’t want to have to deal with Pippa’s poorly-hidden pity the whole time. It was going to be their last performance together as students of this school, and she wants it to be…just—_

_She just wants everything about it to be something worth holding on to._

_She hears Pippa’s voice, and Georgette’s and two other girls’—Viridia Ramsgate and Henrietta Flume. They were always hanging around, smiling to Pippa’s face and shooting glares at Hecate the moment Pippa’s back was turned. _

_Hecate already knows Pippa shouldn’t have been friends with her. She wasn’t stupid. They didn’t have to remind her of it every four seconds._

_Pippa was everything Hecate wasn’t: pretty and happy and friendly and safe. (They were an equal match for wits, but that hardly mattered to people like Georgette, who laughed and cheated her way through every assignment she could—and for every assignment she couldn’t, there was her mother’s money to fix it.)_

_Pippa was _everything_. And Hecate had spent most of their first year half-terrified of her and then half-angry at her for making her feel that way. (She hadn’t figured out what the other half of those half-feelings had been until much later… She still hasn’t entirely figured it out, if she’s honest)._

_And then one night Hecate had come back from Broomhead’s office white-faced and tearless, not looking where she was going, and had collided with Pippa on the stairs, knocking a pilfered tin of biscuits out of her arms and down half the tower steps._

_Hecate had frozen it thoughtlessly with a spell, stopping the loud CLANG!ing of the tin against the stone, and when they’d both recovered from their fright, Pippa had grinned at her and said, “I won’t tell, if you won’t” and had gone to pluck the tin out of the air._

_They’d spent the rest of the night hidden together under a blanket in Pippa’s room, eating the biscuits and arguing over the transformation treatise they’d learned in Spell Science that day._

_Hecate had thought Pippa would forget her by morning._

_But she hadn’t._

_Hecate knows Pippa shouldn’t have been friends with her. She knows that. _

_“—Oh, you mean Hecate? I haven’t seen her,” Georgette’s saying. “I really don’t know why you put up with her, Pippa. She’s so—so—” _

_Hecate knows. They don’t have to remind her._

_“What? Brilliant?” Pippa says, and Hecate’s heart does a funny thing in her chest. “Clever? The most talented witch in our year?”_

_“The most horrible witch in our year, more like,” Georgette says, and Viridia and Henrietta laugh._

_Pippa has said before that Georgette’s mother and her mother belonged to the same coven, and so they were expected to be friendly to each other. Pippa has also said that she would like to fly out to the centre of the lake and drop Georgette straight into it and never look back._

_Hecate tries to believe her._

_“Oh, don’t, Pippa! You know what she’s like! She’d curse me as soon as look at me, I know it!”_

_“Wouldn’t we all,” Pippa mutters under her breath. Hecate bites down on a laugh, pressing her back against the pillar and clutching her books tightly to her chest._

_“What was that, Pippa?”_

_“Oh. Nothing.”_

_“You know, I’d be careful, if I were you,” Georgette says, her voice going flighty and sweet and dangerous. “My mother’s heard things about her. Things that would make you think twice.”_

_“Right. Like what?”_

_“Like that Broomhead isn’t really her aunt.”_

_Pippa scoffs. “Everyone knows that.”_

_“Well, how about that Broomhead doesn’t want her—never did! She was forced to take her in, years ago, after her father was taken away to Grimsby!”_

_“I don’t know where your mother—”_

_“And you know what else? You know who her father is? You know who he is? He’s _Horus Hardbroom!”

_“Georgette Plover, you take that back!” Pippa shouts, but Hecate can barely hear her over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears._

_“I won’t. And it’s true, anyway! My mother says—”_

_“Well, jinx your mother!”_

_“Pippa!” one of the other girls gasps. _

_“And jinx you, too! How dare you say such horrible things about Hecate! How dare you make up such a terrible lie! Just because her name’s the same as that—that vile person—How dare you!"_

_Hecate feels cold all over._

_Their footsteps are coming closer, echoing like spellfire off the stones, but Hecate can’t seem to make herself move—or think—or breathe—or—or—_

_She can’t hold back the shaking anymore._

_“Hecate?”_

_It’s Pippa._

_Of course it’s Pippa, but somehow Hecate hadn’t fully understood what it meant—what it would feel like, until the moment Pippa’s suddenly in front of her, looking at her—_

_Hecate can’t breathe._

_Pippa frowns, her pretty brown eyes full of concern. “Hecate, are you—”_

_Hecate pushes off the pillar and runs._

_She runs, all the way across the courtyard, back into the castle, back up the stairs._

_She doesn’t know where she’s going until she’s there._

_The door falls open and she stumbles into the room._

_“I’ll do it,” she gasps, and Broomhead’s cold, cold eyes raise from her desk, still not looking at her. Never looking at her. “I’ll do it. Whatever you want.”_

_Broomhead smiles._

_Pippa will hate her. They were supposed to—they were supposed to do everything together._

_But—no. _

_Pippa hates her anyway. Or, she would, if she ever found out the truth. If she ever _believed _the truth about Hecate._

_It was going to end like this, anyway. It was always going to end like this._

_Pippa thinks her—thinks her _horrible _and _terrible _and—and of course she does! Of course she does! _

_It was all true. Everything they’d said about Hecate was true._

_And Pippa hates her._

_Hecate can’t breathe._

_It was going to end like this, anyway. How naïve was she to believe otherwise? Broomhead would have got her way, one way or the other, and—and—_

_Pippa hates her._

_She just doesn’t know it yet._

Ding-ding.

Ding-ding.

Ding-ding.

Hecate gasps awake, flailing about for a moment before her mind catches up to where she is.

At Cackle’s. In her living room. Alone.

_Taken Mildred upstairs, _says a note on the low table in front of her, scribbled onto an open page of Mildred’s notebook._ Didn’t want to wake you. Get some rest!_

_See you tomorrow. (Left some scones on the table if you get hungry)._

_Love,_

_Julie_

Hecate breathes.

_Ding-ding. Ding-ding. Ding-ding._

Hecate breathes.

_Ding-ding! Ding-ding!_

Startling into sudden awareness, Hecate darts forward and fishes around in the detritus on the table—Mildred’s tangle of strings, Julie’s note and empty teacup, the rumpled _Practical Potioneer_—for her mirror.

_Incoming call from: Pippa Pentangle, _curl the gilded words across the mirror’s surface.

_(17 missed calls from: Pippa Pentangle_ say the words underneath.)

Setting her jaw, Hecate silences the mirror once more and shoves it under Mildred’s notebook.

_Well, _she thinks vaguely, collapsing back into the settee and trying and failing to wring the slow-moving terror of the dream from her mind, _she’s found out now, hasn’t she?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	30. Chapter Thirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end for updated author's note.

Term draws to a graceless close, and Hecate finds herself oddly relieved for the distraction of everyday troubles.

The journalistic fervour surrounding Horus’ escape has died down by degrees in the weeks since. The news witches, it seems, have begun to move on to the rather pointless exercise of determining how Horus—who had been stripped of his magic years ago—had managed to convince Bakewell to surrender his magic for Horus’ use. _Pointless _because Bakewell wasn’t talking and Horus had apparently disappeared into thin air.

By the last fortnight of term, Hecate is once again able to walk freely through the castle and its grounds without fear of being accosted by the press. She passes an almost-pleasant week of afternoons in the staff room dealing with the marking left over from Ada’s stint as interim Potions teacher, and then spends the first Monday of exams on patrol following the trail of a pair of contraband Rat-crobats as they make a circuit of the rooms in the east dormitory wing—assisted on their way by several recent sixth-year transference licensees who really ought to have known better.

“One week since the transference exam,” she hisses at the pyjama-clad culprits, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkened corridor. “_One week_, and _this _is the sort of behaviour I’m to expect from you.”

The girls trudge off to bed and Hecate is left to figure out what to do with the two confiscated rodents turning somersaults in midair near her shoulder. (In the end she leaves them for Ada, who gifts them to her young Hallow cousins. Hecate, remembering Mildred’s letters, wonders how the Hallow girls would explain their new pets’ unnatural gymnastic ability to any Ordinary school friends who might come around.)

Exam week continues with its usual brand of giddy hooliganism—exploding potions and pantry raids and girls falling asleep in their porridge bowls after a night of rule-breaking—and, by the Thursday, Hecate feels nearly herself again.

**

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate looks up from her desk, where she’s entering the last of the fifth years’ exam marks into the gradebook.

Standing in the doorway of the Potions classroom is very nearly the last person she’d have expected to see.

“Geraldine Bluebell,” she says, transferring the gradebook and exams far away from prying eyes.

Geraldine crosses the space from the door, and Hecate half expects the girl to draw some as-yet-unheard-of _Offenhopper’s _horror from up her sleeve.

Instead, she takes a seat in one of the chairs opposite Hecate’s and maintains an uncharacteristic silence, avoiding Hecate’s eyes.

After nearly a minute of such carry-on, Hecate clears her throat impatiently. “Is there something—”

“I’ve been thinking,” Geraldine cuts across her, shifting jerkily in the chair.

Hecate’s jaw works. She closes her mouth again, waiting.

Bright afternoon sun streams through the windows at the back of the classroom. Now that practical exams have finished, and there is no longer chance of airborne contamination, Hecate has taken to leaving the windows open, if only a little. Cheery voices drift up on the late-spring breeze from the courtyard below.

Geraldine scowls, apparently at herself, crossing her arms moodily over her chest. “This was a stupid idea,” she grumbles.

“Perhaps,” Hecate agrees, feeling a bit out of her depth and aiming for something halfway between irritation and professionalism. “But I can hardly make a determination one way or the other if you don’t do me the favour of telling me what, precisely, the idea _is_.”

Geraldine wrinkles her nose. Then she sighs. “My aunts own an apothecary,” she says, finally, looking away across the room, her eyes roaming the jarred specimens Hecate keeps on the shelves behind her desk. “I always sort of thought I’d do something else—I dunno. Travel, or something, maybe.” Geraldine shrugs. “But lately I guess…I’ve been realizing I want to go back and help them run the shop. And at first I thought, well, I’ll just go apprentice somewhere, right out of school. But more and more people now—all the really good places, for what I want—want you to have at least sixth year done, and a lot of people want university.” She glances at Hecate. “And I think…what I really want is to be able to help them with development. My Aunt Lin does most of it by herself, while Aunt Fei runs the store, and they’re getting so many orders lately it’s hard to keep up without both of them being able to work on both things and—anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She nibbles at her thumbnail, then takes a steadying breath and pushes herself to sit up straight. “Listen, what I wanted to know is—just…I know I haven’t always been exactly…”

Hecate presses her lips together to keep from saying something disparaging to finish that sentence.

Geraldine sighs again, looking like she’s steeling herself to fly into a storm. She tugs at the red sash around her waist, then fixes Hecate with a determined look. “What I wanted to ask was: Do you think, if I take a sixth year to prepare, it might be possible for me to get into the Potions competency at Weirdsister?”

Hecate blinks.

Geraldine makes a face. “I know my marks aren’t good. But I _swear _I’d work really hard. And, maybe, if you’d just let me brew things after class sometimes, I could—”

“Geraldine,” Hecate interrupts, an unsettled feeling stirring in her chest. Perhaps it’s only the recent proximity of old memories… “Is there somebody…” She swallows, tapping at her timepiece. “Is this entirely your decision?”

Geraldine frowns. “What—d’you mean, is somebody forcing me to do this?”

Thinking of the circumstances surrounding her own sixth year, Hecate nods.

“No.” Geraldine shakes her head. “_No. _My aunts don’t even know about it.” She fidgets. “I didn’t want to tell them, in case…” She bites her lip, cutting her eyes to the side. “Whatever.”

Still suspicious, Hecate tries to find a delicate way to phrase her next question. After all… “And…it isn’t…” She clears her throat. “…about a girl?”

“No!” Geraldine flushes. “Well, I mean—It’s not—” She huffs out a breath. “No. It’s not like that, anyway.”

Several thoughts are taking shape in Hecate’s mind, and she attempts to sort her own feelings from the facts of the situation at hand. Geraldine, to be sure, was nothing like Hecate had been as a girl. And, by all accounts, her aunts were well-respected and level-headed apothecaries…

Chances are she’s being overly cautious. As usual.

Having apparently taken Hecate’s silence as some sort of answer, Geraldine shoves herself out of her chair. “I told you it was a bad idea,” she says, and begins stalking her way over to the door.

“Wait,” Hecate says.

Geraldine stops, her face set, but doesn’t look at Hecate.

“I—it isn’t a _bad idea_. Necessarily.” Hecate folds her hands across the desk, attempting to gather herself and not entirely sure she manages it. “It is true that your marks have never been what any discerning person would call…spectacular. However,” she says, with all the grace she has, “you are not…incompetent. The mediocrity of your achievements thus far are due more to a distinct lack of self-application rather than an absence of talent.” She creases her mouth into a stern look. “If you were really to work as hard as you say you will, I believe there is a possibility you could gain acceptance into the competency.”

Geraldine turns slowly, her hands fisted at her sides. She gives Hecate a wary look.

Hecate makes herself meet the girl’s eyes. “Was it the Experimental track you were aiming for?” she says, as casually as she can manage.

Geraldine blinks. “Erm.” She frowns. “Yeah. Yes. Probably.”

“You’d need high technical marks on the entrance exam,” Hecate says, studying her hands. She can’t quite say why she’s doing this. “Provided you keep your promise, and apply yourself to your work, I would be willing to supervise extra study in Potions—perhaps an hour a week—toward that end.” She raises her eyes. “And it wouldn’t hurt to take extra studies in Botany and Spell Science as well. Have you spoken to Misses Mayweather and Gossamer?”

Geraldine doesn’t seem to know what to say—a first, in Hecate’s experience. “Er—no.”

“I suggest you do. _Before _the end of term. Particularly because Miss Gossamer, as form mistress, will need to make arrangements for you to be added to the sixth-year register.”

Geraldine is facing her fully now. “Alright,” she says, her face twisting. “I—erm. Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that.” She appears to struggle with something for a moment, before: “Look, are you serious?”

“Usually.”

Geraldine rolls her eyes. The expression is much more familiar than the uncertainty of the last few minutes. “I mean—I guess I sort of expected you to say no. Like: absolutely, no. And maybe laugh in my face a bit.” She hooks one arm behind her back to take hold of the opposite elbow, walking a little closer to Hecate’s desk, a thoughtful look on her face.

A chorus of chanting drifts up through the window. The sixth years have apparently taken their revising out-of-doors.

“I assure you, I am not in the habit of laughing in my students’ faces,” Hecate says, though, had she been more generally inclined toward laughter, she can’t say there wouldn’t have been times when she was sorely tempted.

This would not have been one of them, however.

Geraldine laughs herself, a little. “Yeah. I know.”

The moment following is vaguely surreal: a pleasant-enough silence spent trying not to smile at Geraldine Bluebell—who had certainly never before been responsible for instigating such an expression in Hecate. The emphatic opposite, actually.

Then Geraldine’s face goes serious, her dark eyes uncharacteristically soft and solemn. “HB. Listen. I just wanted to say…” She lets out a breath, standing straighter. “I just wanted to say—because I know the other girls are probably too scared to: I’m sorry about your da. We all are. He seems like a right old prick. And I know a bit about that, myself, so…” She shrugs. “I know we’re not supposed to talk to you lot—to the teachers—like you’re real people. And I’m not trying to be impertinent, or anything, I swear. I just thought you should know. He can go fly into space, as far as we’re concerned.”

Hecate feels her cheeks heat, and struggles to tamp down whatever sudden startled feeling had overtaken her chest.

“Anyway,” Geraldine says, swinging her arms out to her sides. “I’ll go now. But…thanks. For not—you know. For actually listening.”

Hecate watches her go, and then shakes herself. “Geraldine,” she manages, and the girl pauses in the doorway, looking questioningly back over her shoulder.

Hecate clears her throat and rummages in her desk for a slip of paper. Dipping her quill in fresh ink, she quickly writes down the titles of two treatises on advanced brewing, as well as that of a technical biography of Delilah Dwillitt, one of the better-known revolutionary potions developers of the last century. She crosses the room and holds it out briskly for Geraldine to take. “I believe these should help direct your reading over the summer holiday,” she says, keeping her voice cool and steady, though she feels anything but.

Geraldine looks up from the list, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Thanks. Really. Thank you.”

Hecate lets her expression soften by a degree. “You’re welcome.”

Geraldine’s grin widens impishly. “See you next term.”

Hecate, who hadn’t quite connected the idea of Geraldine trying for the Potions competency with the reality of having to teach _Geraldine Bluebell _for another year, shudders. “Spells preserve us,” she mutters, sinking back into her chair with a sigh.

Still, she returns to her marking feeling oddly contented. A sweet-smelling breeze drifts around the room. Perhaps she should open the windows more often.

**

On the morning after departure, Hecate walks down through the newly-empty corridors to the Potions classroom. She intends to make a start on inventory-taking—given what a disaster restocking had been last summer, she hopes a little early initiative might provide a buffer against whatever disasters were in store for her this year.

She _intends_ to do inventory, at least for a few hours. However, every intention is soon flown out the window.

She’s walking past Ada’s office, making a mental tally of the expired jars of porcupine spines she remembered seeing when setting out ingredients for her fourth years’ practical exam, when the door opens—and she hears an impossibly familiar voice.

“—I’ll be sure to send you a list. I know Meredith’s been wanting to set up something like that for years.”

Hecate’s heart jumps in her throat.

“That would be splendid, Pippa. And thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Have I? I’m glad. Don’t hesitate to write or mirror if you think of anything else. Oh! And tell Esme hello from me, when you see her next. I’m looking forward to having her at school in August.”

“I certainly will. Fly safe!”

“Thank you, I shall.”

The door closes again. Hecate ducks into the nearest stairwell, heart pounding, and—

“Oh!”

_CLANG! Clang-clang-clang—_

Hecate watches blankly as a painted metal tin tumbles down the stairs.

“Hecate. I—”

Hecate whips her head around, pressing her back further against the curved stone wall. A small window in the alcove over her shoulder lets in a shard of brilliant sunlight that cuts across Pippa’s cheek.

Pippa blinks.

Frantically, Hecate transfers the tin into her hands, shoves it across the narrow space between her and Pippa.

“Oh. Yes,” Pippa says, taking the tin and holding it against her stomach. She makes an odd face at herself. “Custard tarts. From your Leavers’ Ball. Apparently there were several left over. Ada was kind enough to…” She trails off.

Hecate struggles to keep her breathing steady.

“I…” Pippa’s eyes dart from side to side. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “You look well.” Her eyes widen. “I mean—”

Hecate chokes. “I’ve got to go.”

She hurries down the stairs, never mind it’s the entirely wrong direction. She hears Pippa muttering something behind her—and then there are footsteps echoing behind her in the stairwell.

“Wait—” Pippa pants, catching her up at the foot of the stairs and edging around in front of her. “Hecate. Please, wait.”

Hecate can’t look at her.

“I—I wanted to ask…”

Hecate freezes. She can’t—she _can’t _do this. Despairing, she brings her hand up to transfer herself away—

“No, _wait._” Pippa’s hand comes up to grasp her wrist.

Hecate’s heart skips. They stare at each other for a long moment, as if caught up in a spell.

“I—” Pippa says, and then drops Hecate’s hand like it had burned her. “Sorry. I—” She doesn’t seem to know where to look. An odd, dire sort of expression crosses her face.

Hecate lets her hand fall to her side and braces herself for what’s to come.

Finally, Pippa clears her throat, visibly straightening her shoulders. “I wanted to ask,” she says, her voice steadier. “There was…a book. That Ives mentioned to me. They were looking for it. That is…I mean…” Pippa presses her lips together, her eyes darting away. Hecate tries not to stare. “There was a book Ives mentioned to me,” she says, looking at Hecate again. “We were thinking of incorporating it into the readings for our Advanced Brewers Club. _The Mix-Makers’ Magic. _I wondered if you’d heard of it?”

This is such a different subject to the one Hecate had been expecting—had been _dreading—_that at first she cannot seem to make her mind follow Pippa’s words.

“I…” She breathes. Pippa’s eyes are very brown.

_Get a hold of yourself, _she thinks, flexing her hands at her sides.

“Yes,” she says, at last.

“Yes?” Pippa asks, looking a bit dazed.

“I…the book,” Hecate manages. “I’ve heard of it. Yes.”

Pippa blinks. “Oh. Right. I—Yes. Well, I—I just thought you might have some ideas with respect to…how we might implement some of the lessons.” She clears her throat. “Particularly the section about morphological potions. If you wouldn’t mind sharing? I know that’s something you’ve published on.”

Hecate feels at a loss. “Erm,” she says, perhaps for the first time in her life. “No. I…wouldn’t. Mind. I wouldn’t mind.” She hardly knows what she’s saying.

Pippa brightens. “Really? I—well, actually, I’ve got to go, I’m afraid,” she says, her face falling a little, though she can’t seem to help the sudden lightness in her voice. “I’ve a meeting with one of our donors—a dreadful bore, really, but he’s been generous to us in the past, and so I—” She breathes. “Anyway. Would you—could I write you?” Her cheeks pink. “About the book, I mean. I could share some of our plans with the lessons so far, and then—well just anything that comes to mind, I suppose.”

Hecate stares at her.

Pippa’s blush deepens. “Well.” She clears her throat. “Well met, Hecate.”

Then she’s walking away across the entrance hall and out the door into the sunshine.

Hecate spends most of the day attempting to understand what had just happened.

It isn’t until the next afternoon that she remembers she’d meant to begin sorting out the Potions cupboard.

**

The letter comes the following Tuesday.

Hecate hadn’t really thought—hadn’t _let_ herself think—it would come at all.

_Dear Hecate,_

(_Dear Hecate, _Hecate reads, over and over. _Dear Hecate._)

_It was lovely to speak with you last week. I hope this finds you well._

_I’ve enclosed our plans for the lessons on morphological potions. Please do share any thoughts you have._

_Many thanks in advance._

_Pippa_

Hecate finds herself almost disappointed by the end of it, though she couldn’t say why. The letter said exactly what it ought to have. It was…Pippa was asking for help. Academically. Professionally.

After not having spoken more than two sentences together to Hecate for more than thirty years.

After...

Hecate does as she’d said she would. She reads through Pippa’s lesson plans, makes notes and additions where she sees fit, adds suggestions for further reading and—with not a little self-consciousness—attaches an annotated copy of the paper she’d had published six years ago on the moon-altered potency of luna moth chrysalises.

“Has she?” Julie asks that Wednesday when she and Hecate are sitting together in the staff room, waiting for the final staff meeting of term to begin.

Hecate hadn’t meant to tell her about Pippa’s letter. She supposed she only wanted to seek reassurance that attaching one’s own work, unrequested, to a piece of academic correspondence wasn’t as egoistic as she was beginning to fear it was. Wasn’t it just what Pippa had accused her of on the half-term trip? _We can’t all be the great Hecate Hardbroom…_

Hecate feels another jolt of panic just thinking about it. But Julie seems far more interested in the fact that Pippa had written at all.

“She…had mirrored me,” Hecate says, by way of explanation—though she has yet to make headway explaining the situation even to _herself_, let alone anyone else. “Several times. Recently. After…everything.”

“But you didn’t answer?” Julie asks, like she already knows Hecate hadn’t.

Hecate shakes her head, tapping her fingers against her timepiece.

“Well.” Julie sips her tea. “It’s what I would have done. If I wanted you to talk to me. It’s what I _did _do, really.”

Hecate’s head comes up.

Julie raises a hand. “I’m not saying she didn’t really want your help—or that I didn’t. Of course that’s not what I’m saying,” Julie shakes her head, putting her teacup down on the table, a thoughtful expression creasing her forehead. “I just think…sometimes it’s easier to talk about things you both already know how to say. Rather than things you don’t.”

Hecate doesn’t want to think about the things Pippa isn’t saying. Can't say.

Won't say.

**

_Dear Hecate, _

_Thank you very much for your help, and for your enclosure of the article. I’ve passed both along to Ives, who says hello, and would like me to tell you they found your insight about the destructive interference of certain cyclical and circadian rhythms “bloody brilliant.” (A direct quote.) _

_If you wouldn’t mind, I would very much like to read your account of the efficacy of dragon dung as a pH balance. I recall seeing the article last summer, but I’m afraid I haven’t had the time to read it closely, or to do my own experiments. _

_All best,_

_Pippa_

**

“You told her about that?” Mildred asks, making a face.

“Mind your fingers,” Hecate orders, watching as the knife Mildred’s holding comes precariously close to slicing skin instead of carrot. They were in the Potions classroom, and she had set the girl about practicing elementary knife skills on surplus kitchen vegetables: peel, slice, chop, dice, halve, quarter, cube. It gives Hecate a vague, uneasy feeling to see Mildred sitting up on a stool behind one of the workstations—a feeling she is determined to ignore. “And yes, I did. The relevant pieces of it, at least. Nothing about…”

“The exploding lizard guts?” Mildred asks.

“Pickled newts,” Hecate corrects. “And, being a direct result of the application of the dung, that was in fact one of the relevant details I chose to share. I had meant anything…after,” she says, carefully, looking up from the inventory book spread open before her on the desk.

Mildred tilts her head, a bit of carrot juice dripping from the knife onto the cutting board. “I don’t think I’d mind if you told her that. About my magic and things. She already knows part of it, anyway. Well, not about the crying, or…all that. But even if you told her, she wouldn’t be mean about it,” she says, making a passable job at dicing the sliced carrot.

“No,” Hecate agrees softly.

“Can you tell her ‘hi’ from me, next time you write?”

Hecate stills.

“Tell her ‘Mildred can peel a carrot without even looking,’” Mildred says, and grins up at her.

Hecate widens her eyes. “I certainly will not.”

**

_Dear Pippa,_

_Mildred thanks you for your suggestion and insists that I include the enclosed gift. (In case you have difficulty—as I did—identifying the genus and species of the specimen: it is meant to be a folded paper frog. Mildred applied the Colour-change Charm herself. She wishes to know, for her own mysterious purposes, whether you think applying the charm to an animal that naturally changes colour would require less magical energy than in other cases.)_

_Selection Day has passed, which is the most I can say for it. I am interested to hear more about your preparations for the summer programme._

_Sincerely,_

_Hecate_

_**_

Mildred’s friends from Pentangle’s come to visit for the first two weeks of July. Hecate spends most of the last week of June hearing about nothing but Norah and Ben, and what Norah and Ben might like to do, and where Norah and Ben will sleep, whether Norah and Ben might like to drive down to the village sometime, and if Norah and Ben can come along to Mildred’s magic lessons. Hecate agrees to the last against her better judgement—the alternative being to let Mildred miss two weeks of lessons—and then prepares to see very little of her otherwise for the next fourteen days.

That is not, in fact, what happens.

Instead, Hecate finds herself in company nearly every afternoon—to the point that Morgana takes to habitually secluding herself in Hecate’s bedroom at half-past one each day, the better to avoid the small invading army that comes crashing through the front door like clockwork shortly after.

“Miss Hardbroom?”

Hecate puts her book down. It was one Pippa had mentioned in her last letter (nearly two weeks ago, now), and Hecate has convinced herself she had only bought it out of idle curiosity, rather than an anticipatory desire to fill her next letter with commentary on something Pippa might actually find interesting.

“Can we please, please borrow your encyclopaedia?” Mildred asks, careening to a halt in front of the settee, Ben and Norah on her heels. “We want to go foraging!”

Hecate frowns. “Foraging? For what?”

“Just anything,” Mildred says, at the same time that Norah says “Stinging nettles.”

Ben elbows her. The boy seemed to have the most sense, out of the three. “You weren’t supposed to _tell _her that,” he hisses.

Or perhaps not.

“I see,” Hecate says, leaning forward, waving a hand at the Victrola to shut it off. “And what, precisely, were you planning to do with ‘just anything’?”

“Nothing,” Mildred says, at the same time that Norah says, “Ben’s cousin knows a potion that makes your tongue go numb.”

Hecate stares.

The children shuffle their feet uncomfortably.

“Mildred Hubble,” Hecate begins, when she finally finds her voice. “You don’t mean to tell me you were planning to brew an unknown potion, _unsupervised, _in—”

“We weren’t really going to make it!”

Hecate stands. “Do _not _interrupt me!” She raises a hand to her temple, pacing away and then back again. “How many times have I told you—” She cuts herself off, growing horror striking her in the chest. “_Mildred, _what were you _thinking?_” Hecate shakes her head, feeling a bit breathless. “Did I not spend half the lesson, only last week, explaining to you about the dangers of mimicry?”

Mildred wrinkles her nose. “Yes?”

Hecate fixes her with a look, feeling her heart rate rising by the second. “And what, pray tell,” she says, deadly calm, “is a plant, native to this region, that looks very like the stinging nettle, but is, in fact, a _deadly neurotoxin_?

Mildred’s eyes widen. “Hedgecat’s tongue.” Her face has gone pale, and she looks nearly as frightened as Hecate feels.

Good.

“Mildred, I—I cannot even begin to tell you how disappointed I am with you,” Hecate says, only barely keeping her voice from rising. She can taste copper on her tongue.

Mildred nods miserably, a few silent tears dripping down her cheeks. Ben looks between her and Hecate, a deeply uncomfortable expression on his face, and Norah whispers “_Sorry, Mildred._”

Mildred’s cheeks flush with embarrassment, and she sniffles, scrubbing at her face.

Hecate finds she cannot speak anymore, so she transfers the lot of them with her up to the Hubbles’ rooms.

It is the closest Hecate has ever heard Julie come to actually shouting at Mildred, in all the years she’s known her.

“I can’t believe them,” Julie says, next to Hecate on the couch. They’ve done nothing but stare into space for the last quarter of an hour. Julie had mirrored both children’s parents who, after doing a fair bit of shouting of their own, had decided they would let the children finish out their visit—conditionally. The weekend outing they had planned was cancelled, and they were to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening quietly in Mildred’s room, thinking about the disaster they’d nearly visited upon themselves.

“I mean,” Julie says, “where were they even planning to do the brewing? Surely they knew you’ve got enough spells around your classroom to wake half the country, if they tried.”

“It’s a cold-brew potion, apparently,” Hecate says blankly. “Any flowerpot would have done.”

“God,” Julie breathes.

Silence falls again. Julie gets up to make tea, and then to bring the children some supper.

They pick at their own food—a summer pasta dish with cream and peas—and put on an episode of _Bake-Off _that Hecate barely follows.

The sun has mostly set when the door to Mildred’s room creaks open.

“Mum?”

Julie breathes, and pushes herself off the couch, pressing a hand to Hecate’s shoulder as she passes.

She and Mildred speak quietly for a minute, and Hecate very intentionally doesn’t listen. Then there’s the sound of dishes clattering in the sink, and of soft footsteps coming across the room.

Mildred’s eyes are red. She can’t seem to look directly at Hecate.

Her shoulders hitch. “I’m sorry,” she says. She breathes a shaky sigh. “I’m really sorry,” she gasps, and looks at Hecate through bleary eyes, wiping her face with the collar of her _STAR WARS _t-shirt. “I didn’t—didn’t think—”

“I know you didn’t,” Hecate says, as gently as she can manage.

“Ben and Norah didn’t know—about—about the mimic plant,” Mildred says quickly, shaking her head. “I was the only one who did. But I—I didn’t _remember,_” she says, crying in earnest now.

“It hardly matters whether you remembered or not,” Hecate says sharply, though she can feel tears beginning to prick at her eyes. “You should never have even considered brewing something on your own. Especially not a potion you’d heard of second-hand from another child’s cousin!”

“I _know,_” Mildred says. “Norah said it was a stupid—stupid idea. That’s why she wanted to check—“ Mildred hiccoughs “—the encyclopaedia. Before we did it.”

“Yes, well, thank Merlin for small mercies,” Hecate says briskly. She looks at Mildred. “You do realize,” she says, her throat working, “that if you _had _managed to make that potion, there was not an insignificant chance it would have been toxic, even if you had managed to find nettles rather than hedgecat’s tongue. The particular combination of ingredients is highly volatile, and it was likely to have—”

Mildred nods frantically.

Hecate shakes her head, her vision blurring. “_Mildred…_”

Mildred lurches forward, her head nearly colliding with Hecate’s jaw as she wraps her arms around Hecate’s neck.

Hecate is so startled she forgets to breathe.

Then, slowly, she brings her hands up around Mildred’s shoulders and holds on, tight.

“Don’t do that again,” she whispers, her voice raw, the words caught in Mildred’s hair. She closes her eyes, then opens them, blinking rapidly. “Don’t _ever _do that again.”

Mildred holds on harder, breathing in little gasps. “I won’t.”

Hecate blinks up at the ceiling and lets out a breath she feels like she’s been holding for hours.

**

The children are noticeably subdued in the days afterward. Hecate expects them back again in the afternoons as usual but, apart from the three very overwrought apology notes she’d received the next morning, she hardly sees anything of them except in the evenings, when she comes up to the Hubbles’ rooms to mix the reagent into Ben’s potion before the children go to bed.

(She had been entrusted with the task by Ben’s mother, who normally prepared it when Ben was away from school. A particular kind of hormone blocker, the potion’s dry concentrate had to be mixed with the liquid reagent directly before consumption. Apparently Mage Aconite was no further along in their experiments with altering the flavour; Ben’s face upon seeing it mixed up every evening was always one of overdrawn disgust. Julie tried to make things cheerier by setting out one of the cups Mildred had gotten from her school trip to the aquarium—the one with small plastic fish swimming in a viscous liquid between the cup’s two layers of plastic—and afterward the girls would join Ben in an odd parade-dance around the kitchen table, clapping and chanting something that sounded like ‘boy juice’ while waving napkins from dinner over their heads. Hecate, remembering the half-term trip, always had a butterscotch at the ready and, at nearly a week into the children’s stay, had already accumulated roughly fifteen pages of notes on non-reactive flavouring compounds she hoped to share with Mage Aconite when Pippa next sent her letter. Whenever that was.)

On Saturday, however, the customary knock sounds at her door and the three children show themselves into Hecate’s front room.

“We’re here for Mildred’s magic lesson,” Ben says, when nobody else seems inclined to speak. “But if you want me and Norah to leave, we can.”

“Of course not,” Hecate says, and hopes that settles the matter. She takes them down to the Potions classroom and, after a very firm review of the rules, sets them about identifying a set of samples she’d arranged for them around the workstations.

Norah’s maglet had been fitted with a charm that allowed it to ‘see’ what was in front of her and then to describe it to her, in the same tinny voice used by dictation jinxes. After making identifications at three of the stations, the girl raises her head and says, “Oh. It’s an object lesson.”

Hecate, a little flustered at having been caught out, and then more than a little irritated with herself for bothering to feel that way, says, simply, “Quite.”

She had laid out samples of every mimic and original specimen native to a three-hundred-mile radius of Cackle’s. There were over thirty-seven plants in all, along with their lookalikes, and Hecate expects it will take the children at least two hours to properly identify, classify, and make adequate preparation and interaction notes for the entire collection.

She is correct.

They meet Julie outside for lunch in the courtyard, and the children spend most of it lying around in the sunshine on a pair of old beach towels, eating tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches and arguing about a television programme called _Avatar: The Last Airbender, _which Mildred had apparently introduced to the other children earlier that week.

“Norah’s _obviously _a waterbender,” Ben says, “and I’m—”

“Am not!”

“—and _I’m _an airbender,” Ben finishes. “But I don’t know what Mildred is.”

“A firebender.”

“What? But Zuko’s evil!”

“Hmm,” is all Mildred says.

“What on earth are they talking about?” Hecate asks aside to Julie, who is lying next to her on the grass, dappled sunshine shifting across her cheeks, a pair of sunglasses pushed back into her hair.

Julie turns her head, squinting in the sunlight. “It’s a bit difficult to explain, to the uninitiated,” she says, tucking her arm behind her head, “but it’s about a world where people are born with the ability to control one of the four elements. There’s a nation for each element. And then—” she coughs, and her voice changes “—and then everything changed when the fire nation attacked.”

For some reason, Mildred finds this extremely funny.

Hecate takes a prim bite of her sandwich and decides she’s better off _uninitiated. _

**

After lunch, she takes the children back to the classroom, has them—carefully—help pack away the specimens from the morning, and sets them about the afternoon’s task.

“The Merry Miracle?” Ben asks, making a face.

“The. Merry. Miracle.,” read Mildred’s and Norah’s dictation jinxes.

“_The Merry Miracle_,” Hecate says, just managing not to sneer, “would not have been my choice of names for this potion. To say the least. However, it was not of my invention, and therefore was not mine to name.” She walks in front of the desk, crossing her arms. “It is a relatively simple potion. However, the timing of stages four and five is crucial to the final product. I expect, therefore, that you will take the necessary time to prepare.

She has worked with Mildred a good deal in the last weeks on _mise en place—_on organizing, preparing, and setting out all possible ingredients prior to beginning the actual brewing of the potion. There were, of course, certain ingredients that could only be prepared immediately prior to addition. However, those were rare in Level One potions, and most could stand—and even benefited from—airing out while waiting for the appropriate stage in brewing.

She notices, as the children begin their work, that the Pentangle’s students seem to have an exceptional grasp of ingredient-handling and station-organization and, with only a twinge of injured pride, makes a mental note to ask after Mage Aconite’s teaching materials for the lower-school children.

She also notices that the modified dictation jinxes she’d applied to both Mildred’s and Norah’s brewing instructions had an irritating habit of speaking over each other, their words tangling in the air so that the girls would have to run their fingers over the same line multiple times to hear it clearly. Of course, Hecate had never had more than one student making use of the jinx at one time—had, in fact, not had _any _student use it, prior to Mildred. She wonders what sorts of adjustments she might make to resolve the issue. Something like Ordinary headphones, perhaps?

As the children near the final stages of brewing, Hecate clears her desk and begins setting out several small dishes: a bowl of grapefruit slices, a plate of gherkins, a bunch of grapes, and three small glasses of balsalmic vinegar.

She can feel the children eyeing her curiously. “Keep your attention on your work,” she reminds.

When at last the potions are done—following a brief inspection to ensure they have been brewed at least passably—she has the children decant them into pewter goblets and gather down at the front of the room.

“As you should be well aware by now,” she says, fixing them with a stern look, “eating and drinking _anything _in a potions lab is strictly forbidden. However, we will make an exception today, as it is part of the process of testing the efficacy of this particular potion.”

The children grin excitedly at each other.

“You each are to take a small sip of your potion—_wait until I have finished giving instructions._” She presses her lips together. “Please.”

Mildred and Ben lower their goblets. Norah giggles.

Raising her eyebrows, Hecate starts again. “You each are to take a small sip of your potion. Then, taking each in turn, you will taste each item on the desk and describe its flavour. They are, from left to right, grapefruit, gherkins, grapes, and balsamic vinegar.”

Ben tilts his head. “Is this a trick?”

“It’s going to make it taste gross, isn’t it,” Norah says, already reaching in the direction of the grapefruit.

The other two children watch warily as she takes a bite.

She frowns—then, slowly, smiles. “It’s sweet!” She turns in Hecate’s direction. “The potion made it sweet.”

Hecate hums. “Almost. Think again.”

Norah’s face turns contemplative. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t have done anything to the grapefruit, itself. But…maybe…” Her eyes brighten. “It changed something about how we taste, didn’t it?” She reaches toward the desk and touches a gherkin. “Can you hand me a grape?”

Mildred picks a grape from the bunch and hands it to her.

Norah puts it in her mouth and immediately grins. “It’s sour! I thought so!” She turns toward Hecate again. “I thought so!”

“Yes,” Hecate says, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Well done.”

After that, there is a rush of excitement to try everything on the table—and then to try two or three things at once, _just to see what happens, Miss Hardbroom. _

Hecate had never taught the Miracle potion before. It had always seemed too…insipid. However, watching the children now, she begins rethinking that decision. Perhaps for the new first years…

Mildred, her mouth full of gherkin and grapefruit, begs Hecate to let her mirror Ethel, and she acquiesces. She is, at first, a bit apprehensive that the girl will feel left out—after all, it was Ethel who had suggested she might come and brew potions with Mildred sometime. However, after a flurry of brief and—to Hecate’s mind—nearly unintelligible introductions, Ethel seems mostly preoccupied with getting Mildred to repeat, in detail, exactly what the brewing process had involved. Mildred does so and, without Hecate’s prompting, extracts a promise from her that she won’t try brewing it without her aunt’s express permission.

It turns out to be a non-issue, however, because Ethel was apparently at the moment oceans away, at some Ordinary summer children’s arrangement called ‘Space Camp.’ This sets off another wave of excitement—mostly on the part of Ben and Norah, who set about interrogating Ethel with hungry enthusiasm equal to what she’d just displayed over the Miracle potion.

Hecate, feeling somehow both content and overwhelmed, sits back in her chair and lets the children talk with each other.

Mildred talks with them for another minute before handing the mirror off to Ben and coming to stand at Hecate’s side.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” she says, softly. “You made us make a potion sort of like the one we were planning. Except it was better than that one would have been. And we had permission. And you were watching us.”

Hecate had thought she’d notice. In company, Mildred wasn’t as loud about her intellect as Norah, nor as openly observant as Ben. It was odd, in fact, to see her be the quiet one of the group, and at the beginning of the children’s visit Hecate had worried that the other children were somehow smothering her. But she had come to realize that Mildred was simply the sort of child who was unbothered when somebody else was quicker to state an idea she herself already held, or a conclusion she had already come to. She didn’t have the need to always be recognized as the quickest or the cleverest in the room—though she often _was_ that. With her friends, she seemed happy to be moved by the same tide of conversation and activity that moved them all—glad for the company, perhaps, after summers spent mostly alone in an empty castle—and, at the same time, equally able to move in her own direction, should she wish to.

For better or worse.

“Yes,” Hecate says, “I did.”

**

The letter comes that evening.

_Dear Hecate,_

_I apologize for taking so long to respond to your last letter. Our summer programme has been taking up a great deal of my time in the last weeks—the preparation, and now the first week of classes. The children are lovely, and everything seems to be going well, so far._

_Please thank Mildred for her sweet gift. And tell her that I believe her insight about the Colour-change Charm is correct (clever girl!) but that I would have to do my own experiments to be certain._

_Ives would also like for Julie to know that her book suggestion was ‘spot on.’ It has apparently already led to some very valuable classroom discussions._

_All best,_

_Pippa_

Hecate folds the letter again, staring out across the room.

Entirely professional. Entirely academic.

And yet—and yet…

She closes her eyes. What were they doing?

After thirty years…

After...everything.

She grips the letter. _Just tell me. _

_Would you just tell me?_

_What are we doing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Fun fact: The idea of "The Merry Miracle" potion is based off of a real fruit called the 'miracle berry'--which, as Norah correctly suggests, contains a compound that alters your taste receptors.
> 
> UPDATE 20 April: Unfortunately, I think I am going to have to make some changes to the way I update this story, at least for the next while (probably at least until the summer). With school and everything else going on right now, I don't have the time/energy necessary to give this story the attention it deserves and still update it every week. I am by no means abandoning it--I will still be posting chapters when I can. I just wanted to let you know that updates will probably be irregular/sparse for the next couple of months. 
> 
> I hope everyone stays safe and well!

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes on Cackle's school life: 
> 
> In this universe, Cackle's has six year groups--five compulsory years and an optional sixth year for those who need more time to prepare for university or who wish to do more focused subject-matter study before being placed out in apprenticeships.
> 
> Also, the school year here is divided into two terms: a summer term which lasts from early August to early December, and a winter term which runs from early February to early June. Selection Day falls during the summer holidays, on or close to the summer solstice--so around June 20. Julie was hired sometime shortly afterward.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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